


Surviving the Milkoviches

by all15ofthem



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergent, Drama, Fluffy, Future Fic, Gen, Humor, Husbands, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-11-10 22:13:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 50,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11135712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all15ofthem/pseuds/all15ofthem
Summary: At the core of the issue, Mickey Milkovich had no foot to stand on.If there was anyone to blame for this whole situation, it was Mickey himself.Because what it all came down to was that Mickey Milkovich could not say no to Ian when he rationally explained his desires to raise another child, and had turned on the puppy-eyes full strength about 17 years ago....among other things.--or that time that Mickey and Ian walk in on their teenage daughter with a guy.





	1. Once upon a time...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This fic was born from a Twitter post about Mickey and Ian's faces.  
> [](http://imgur.com/yJbrhnW)  
> 

At the core of the issue, Mickey Milkovich had no foot to stand on. If there was anyone to blame for this whole situation, it was Mickey himself.

It wasn’t so much because it was Mickey’s fault that they came home later than usual, seeing as he was craving _one_ specific brand of beer but couldn’t for the life of him remember where he had bought it last, yet still managed to drag Ian to two supermarkets, one local brewery uptown and finally the corner store until he found what his heart had so desired.

It wasn’t because their lives together had been what could only be described as ‘comfortable’ and ‘happy’ for a former Southside family, and they had been able to raise her in a relatively safe, generally healthy and overall trusting environment to flourish into a normal-sort-of teenager, even though she was still a Milkovich-Gallagher, still didn’t take anyone’s shit, and could still kick your ass or arrange for the kicking to be done if need be.

It wasn’t because, technically, it was half of Mickey’s genes racing through her teenage veins that had probably incited the behaviour to begin with, if _his_ teenage years were anything to go by. It wasn’t even because he had so carelessly forgotten that it had been vaguely hinted at in a backwards sort of way that he would probably be meeting the guy that night, most likely...

No, what it all came down to was that Mickey Milkovich could not say no to Ian when he rationally explained his desires to raise another child, and had turned on the puppy-eyes full strength about 17 years ago.

...among other things.

 

* * *

 

The road to that exact point in time had been a long, trying and bumpy one. Approximately 21 years before _this_ particular fateful day, Mickey was spending his first day in prison trying to intimidate the wrong people and make friends with the right ones. Though the Milkovich name still counted for something, he knew it wouldn’t take long for the gossip to filter through about _which_ Milkovich he was, and why exactly his father had most likely disavowed him. His broken heart had not yet mended itself, but considering the situation at hand, long-term survival was more important than dwelling on the fact that Ian Gallagher had ripped out his heart, stared at it for a good minute or so and then carefully smashed it to pieces with a tire iron on the sidewalk in front of the Gallagher house.

Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and Mickey could count his visitors on the fingers of one hand.

In his new everyday life, Mickey played his self-imposed role of the youngest Milkovich to Fuck U-Up, taking down or arranging for the takedown to be done of at least 10% of the people that posed a credible threat to him and to those he needed to continue surviving. At night, the knowledge that the one thing he had truly believed was real and _his_ had turned out to be an unfortunate misunderstanding was slowly dragging him into a dark, comfortable corner of his mind where he had all the time in the world to reflect on the things he had done, the things he could have done better and the things he never saw coming. And then the day would start all over again, always promising a dark night to follow.

Juvie felt like a cakewalk compared to prison, though it had nothing to do with the differences between the types of inmates, the intensity of the weekly fights or the quality of the food. Once he got into the swing of things, the mind-numbing effect of prison life, even with its inherent risk of getting jumped for the way you coughed or talked or swept your hair out of your eyes that morning, did nothing to bring Mickey back out of his own mind, gave him nothing to look forward to. It felt like he had outgrown the part of him that could make the best of prison even though he hated every second of it like he had hated most of his life living underneath the same roof as his father.

He felt incompetent, distant, weak. Mostly, he felt numb.

Whenever it felt like the numbness would overflow his body and his mind tried to find a way to make him feel alive by fighting or fucking, Mickey would wonder if that was anything compared to how Ian felt, back _then_. And if that was anything compared to how Ian felt, then maybe he could understand why Ian had done what he had done, back _then_. Understand, but not forgive. Understand, but not forget. Understand, but not _comprehend_ how Ian could have done what he had done, because it was impossible for Mickey to fathom, to even picture doing the same thing to Ian. To leave Ian.

Apart from the fighting and fucking, Svetlana’s visits were a welcome distraction, despite the reasons for her visits. He knew she was manipulating him left and right, occasionally bringing Yevgeny for him to see and smile at, and sometimes nonchalantly mentioning what Ian was up to in passing when it looked like his attention was wavering too much. When she brought forth a particularly big job that she had already gotten paid for, he casually turned the tables on her and demanded for Ian to come see him, by whichever means necessary. Svetlana glared, bitched and cursed. She threatened to never come back, to leave him to rot in prison on his own. She growled that she’d move across the country and take Yevgeny with her, and he’d never see his son’s loving face again. She huffed and she puffed, and Mickey leaned back nonchalantly and shrugged, knowing she had no way to go but his way, if only for this once. But behind his uncaring mask, his heart was quietly breaking as he realized Svetlana had, maybe unknowingly, made him choose between Ian and his son, and he realized how instinctively he had chosen Ian without a second thought.

As expected, Svetlana couldn’t take the chance that Mickey would call her bluff, and the next week, she was back, all tits and teeth, smiling and kissing the glass and bringing both Yevgeny and the reason he hadn’t fucked anyone in a week for fear of softly moaning the wrong name. After Svetlana conducted her business as usual, Ian appeared on the other side of the glass. The sound of Ian’s voice coming through the phone momentarily washed away Mickey’s pain and anger and hate at the world, until Ian’s words registered in his brain and he had to force his shock and disappointment from showing on his face.

Mickey forced himself through the remaining time on the clock, the whole encounter more like an ice bath to his soul than the warm waters of the Caribbean sea he had been aiming for. But he had been alone in his desert for too long to care if the water would help him or hurt him, and firmly grasped onto whatever fragments of Ian his eyes could capture, his ears could pick up, his mind could store. He held onto the lies and half-truths so he could have something to think over, and over, and over again later. He cherished the mocking laughs as if they were born out of happiness. He pretended to see love in Ian’s dull eyes, somewhere in his face, right underneath the surface of all the indifference and unease.

And then he asked the questions he knew he shouldn’t have asked, he knew Ian wasn’t ready for, he knew he wouldn’t like the answer to. But he asked anyway, because he needed an answer in case it took him another lifetime to see Ian again. Mickey smiled his best happy smile even though it never reached his eyes. He tried to keep his voice steady and his back straight, tried to keep his eyes trained on Ian as the man on the other side of the glass stumbled through some of the worst lying Mickey had seen in his life.

Time was up and the buzzer went off. What he wouldn’t give for Ian to have put his hand on the glass this time around.

 

On what felt like the other side of the world, Ian continued dragging through life as usual, except for that one gaping hole in his soul that he was determined to blatantly avoid getting into until it went away. He tried to fill that hole the best he could, and though his next relationship spectacularly failed, it brought him a job as an EMT which greatly improved his quality of life, and his bank account. Though the hole was still there, Ian filled up the space around it with work, trying to at least obscure the throbbing loss he felt when he had enough time to sit down and think about it. He cut out anything and anyone who would remind him too much of Mickey, avoiding Mandy and ignoring Svetlana and Yevgeny until everyone stopped calling. It worked for a little bit, and with work keeping him mentally occupied most of the time, he continues dragging through life and pretending he was okay. Not one to stay single for long, his subsequent tragic relationship made him realize that a) he most _definitely_ was a power top, and b) no one could possibly replace Mickey and fill that hole to his complete satisfaction.

After the inevitable breakup and its correlating epiphany, Ian and a six-pack of beers sat down in the baseball field and reminisced over the unbelievable asshole he had been, both in general and specifically related to Mickey. Alone, lying on second base with tears quietly streaming down his face, Ian finally allowed himself to sort through his memories and thoughts of Mickey; the good, the bad, and the very, _very_ ugly. He finally let his heart break for the things he had done to a boy who had tried to do right by him, love him the best he could given the circumstances, have his back in the good and the bad times. He finally acknowledged that not all the things he had done had been because of his condition, or because of the meds, but he had consciously done some very fucked up things, either to prove to himself that Mickey wasn’t good enough for him, or to prove that he wasn’t good enough for Mickey.

It wasn’t until he was halfway drunk that he could even start to open up the box of his visit to Mickey in prison, of all the things he had said and _not_ said, of the way he had acted, of the way he had blatantly, and terribly, lied. Of the way Mickey’s face lit up like the sun upon seeing him, and the way his words made it eclipse straight away. Of the way Mickey had tried to talk to him, to make him feel good, but he had just laughed in his face with a malice he didn’t know he could muster while looking in those blue eyes. Of the way he could see Mickey’s heart breaking just a _little_ bit every time he opened his mouth and these disfigured sounds came out.

If he were in the right state of mind, he would be mad at himself, start a fight so he could punish himself, yell at the world and at God and at whomever for what he had done. But he wasn’t ready to be angry with himself, not yet, not now. He wasn’t ready to burn away the pain he felt, because he needed to feel this, to really _own_ this, to understand what he had done. So for now, he let the pain of having thoroughly, consciously and repeatedly shattered the heart of the man he loved wash over him in waves as he acknowledged, for once, that maybe the fault rested firmly in his hands this time.

A few hours of hugging the porcelain goddess, lying in bed crying, explaining to his family that not all of his depressed moods were related to his condition, and a bit of online research later got him the phone number of a specialized psychiatrist he had heard about from his supervisor. During his next shift at work, he asked his supervisor for help on how best to get in touch with that doctor, and after a few phone calls were made and a few strings were pulled, he had an appointment, an address, and a genuine smile on his face.

After that, things started moving fast. With his doctor and supervisor’s help, they established a stable work and therapy routine. He moved out of the Gallagher house and into his own little studio to be able to focus on his own issues and grow more independent, both in body and mind. He apologized to Svetlana for not being around anymore, and promised Yevgeny he would come play with him more often. He got back in touch with Mandy, and promised to tell her if things got too up or too down. And most importantly, he vowed off any serious relationships _(though not all random sex)_ so he could focus on his own mental health instead of trying to please others for longer than one night.

Though it took him a little more than a year _(not like Mickey was counting or anything)_ , Ian visited Mickey again in prison, of his own volition and completely pro deo. The first time was awkward, a little too formal and stilted. Ian smiled too much, laughed too loudly and was overall too enthusiastic as he tried to explain to Mickey what his life had turned into and how he was working on becoming a more solid presence in the world instead of a leaf being swept away by this gust of wind or the next. Mickey didn’t say much, honestly didn’t know _what_ to say between his surprise at Ian visiting him _(or having any visitors at all)_ and the big revelations Ian was dumping in his lap, and wisely kept his mouth shut but for the occasional ‘uh huh’ and ‘you’re an idiot, Gallagher’.

As Ian did most of the talking, yammering on about this EMT call and the next, Mickey’s brain drank in the mirage holding the phone on the other side of the glass, trying to spot every new laughline in Ian’s face, the darkened coloring of his hair, the way Ian’s _real_ voice sounded as opposed to the one Mickey would occasionally play in his head at night. Hard as he tried to be cold, strong, to keep his walls up so he could continue to survive his miserable, dark life in prison, he couldn’t stop Ian from opening that heavy door to his soul just a smidge to let some of his light in, the sound of his laughter, and a soft warm breeze that smelled like the ocean and freshly cut grass and _life_ ; a life outside of the bars and three concrete walls of his cell, a life with laughter and happiness and silliness and peace, a life with--

The buzzer sounded, cutting right through Mickey’s daydream and making Ian jump in his seat. Ian dropped the phone, fumbled for it and then smiled nervously as he said goodbye, promising to come back as soon as his schedule allowed. Mickey tried to smile back, not sure if he actually succeeded, and only nodded back at the glass whilst mentally preparing himself to file away all that had just happened so he could replay it for the next 14 months _(but he wasn’t counting)_.

Three weeks later, when Ian’s work and therapy schedule allowed it, he visited again. Mickey was no less surprised to see him than the first time, having had three weeks to convince himself that he had most likely hallucinated the whole thing to begin with, and had even asked one or two _(rather confused)_ inmates if they had heard anything about a gas leak. From the moment Mickey sat down in front of the glass, Ian’s excited smile drop-kicked that door to Mickey’s soul open right away, and for the next 30 minutes, Mickey alternated between trying to force it closed again and wondering what the point of resisting was.

Having Ian talk him through his day as an EMT was much more interesting than trying to stave off the boredom of having nothing to do in prison by picking fights or avoiding them. Mickey relished in escaping his dark thoughts and screwed up life for half an hour whilst listening to Ian talk, even if it meant that his heart ached for not knowing what Ian was getting at, what Ian wanted from him, and whether they were still, very much, broken up. Ian never once mentioned that day, never even touched upon a time more than a month ago. Ian seemed to be looking forward only, to long-term plans and his future as an EMT, instead of all the things that happened in the past. All the things that were inherently _them_. But Mickey took it. He took the present Ian and clung to it like a lifeline, not having wanted to believe that Ian would come back to him, visit him again even if he had no good reason to do so, what with his busy EMT life and therapy and Gallagher dinner sessions.

Right before leaving that day, Ian showed him a short video of Yevgeny playing in the park with Svetlana, laughing loudly as he went down a slide. Mickey almost choked, almost felt the tears welling up in his eyes spill over as he looked up and willed them back into his body. He gave Ian a sad smile as the buzzer went off, and rubbed the side of his mouth as he tried to regain his composure before walking out of the visiting area. Daytime in prison was not the time or place to cry, to show any weakness, even if it concerned your own son. That night, Mickey would quietly let the tears stream down his face as he clutched his scratchy blanket to his chest while the sounds of his snoring bunkmate provided a depressing soundtrack to his heart ache.

It became a regular thing, Ian regaling Mickey every 2 or 3 weeks with his craziest EMT stories, and Mickey cautiously beaming up at him like Ian’s voice was the first breath of clean air he’d had all decade. Every now and then, Mickey would tell Ian about a particularly bloody fight or a prisoner that escaped by seducing one of the guards, but he would otherwise try to keep the harsh reality of prison out of his conversations with Ian so as not to taint their visits with the simple facts of his new life. They kept their conversations light and rooted in the present, never talking about ‘them’, or the brutal break up. Mickey never asked Ian to wait for him again.

Whenever Svetlana allowed it, Ian would take Yevgeny with him to see Mickey. Though he would never tell Ian, every visit with Yevgeny tore apart Mickey’s soul as he watched how his son was unfolding into a real, little human, growing bigger and taller and brighter and more talkative from visit to visit. Sometimes Svetlana herself would join Ian, and it was evident by the way they casually talked about dinner or play dates that Ian was quite involved in her and Yevgeny's lives. Their familiar banter and unfamiliar inside jokes would make Mickey wince through his smile, his stomach turning as he was forced to remember that life without him had carried on, and _clearly_ so had Ian and Svetlana. At night, Mickey would realize that that crappy feeling in his stomach after those joined visits was, indeed, envy. He learned to live with it.

Mickey’s life in prison was lonely and inherently full of risk, but his dark clouds were occasionally lifted by Ian’s visits and Yevgeny's little face, pulling him through some of his worst moments. He started feeling like he could have a future, if and when he got out of this hellhole. It had started as a sudden and terrifying thought one night, whilst thinking of nothing at all but picturing Ian’s face. He realized he once again had something to live for, and therefore something to lose. That he had to make something out of himself for those waiting for him outside. That, even if it turned out that Ian had moved on and was now nothing more than a friend, he had a son he wanted to get to know and take care of. Which meant he had to start thinking about _his_ future, about quitting the family business and going legit, because there was no way he was going back to this hell for something as stupid as dealing drugs or weapons. Didn’t Ian always say you could read books in prison?

 

About a year and a half after Ian started visiting Mickey again, Ian and his EMT partner received a call for a woman who had gotten stabbed in the shoulder by her ex-boyfriend. In trying to keep her awake and aware while they rode the ambulance to the hospital, he had asked her her name ( _'Sasha Ronen’)_ , how old she was _('32')_ , and what she did for a living ( _'_ _I’m a criminal lawyer who’s gonna fuck up her ex right after I get this shit stitched up. In court, of course.’_ ). As he tried to keep her talking and have her explain the difference between a good lawyer and an evil lawyer, and how stupid her ex had to be to stab the evil kind, he jokingly told her he could arrange for her ex to get punished once he got put away because he ‘knew people on the inside’. As a consequence, Sasha proceeded to expertly interrogate Mickey’s story out of Ian’s mouth, and it was all Ian could do to try and keep it about Mickey’s attempted-murder charges and not provide her with an expedited rendition of the Ian-and-Mickey-Love-Saga.

Upon arrival at the hospital, she had him rummage around her back pocket for her (somewhat bloodied) business card ( _'_ _What stabbed woman has her business card in her back pocket?!’ ‘You never know when you’re gonna meet your next client, Ian. Keep in touch!’_ ) and told him to call her in a week so they could talk.

Ian called. They talked. Sasha showed Ian what a good lawyer looked like. Ian kept in touch.

After Sasha had Mickey’s attempted-murder charges dropped almost three years into his prison sentence due to insufficient (non-crazy-lady) evidence, and successfully pleaded for the State to write out a nice check for wrongfully imprisoning Mickey for so long, Mickey slowly started to believe that life could be okay again. When Terry was miraculously shanked in a prison riot a few weeks later, Mickey took that as a sign from whatever deity he could think of to take his life off the pause button and live it to the fullest. After getting belligerently drunk for 3 days in a row with his brothers and sister, of course.

With his criminal record mostly cleared and a relatively safe future ahead of him after his father’s timely demise, Mickey’s anxiety of being back in the real world spiked to unrealistic levels. Though Ian had offered him his couch in his tiny studio, Mickey stayed at the Milkovich house out of sheer fear of having to face Ian without a sheet of glass to separate them, not knowing what to do or say, or what _not_ to do or say. He didn’t get to see Ian after being released from prison due to Ian’s busy work and therapy schedule, and now that Mickey’s emotions were no longer contained by prison bars and bullet proof glass, everything seemed too bright, too much, and too fucking fragile. It was all he could do not to punch another cop in the face just to get back to not having to deal with choices and consequences.

 

Surprising to some, it was Svetlana that got through to Mickey, in the most unceremonious of ways. It was a Thursday, about 2 weeks after Terry had died, which had provided Mickey with enough time to sober up, get his ass off the couch and kickstart his new life. Instead, he had done nothing but hang around the house all day, drinking beer, watching tv and avoiding any and all human contact after Mandy had left earlier that week. He had woken up around noon, grabbed a beer from the fridge and sunk into his rightful place in the middle of the couch. With his brothers out on a run somewhere or the other, there was no one to distract him from the mind-numbing effects of daytime tv that he was planning on providing him the entertainment to get him through the day.

At around 6 pm that day, the unlocked front door unexpectedly opened and Svetlana walked into the Milkovich house like she still lived there, holding a 5-year-old in the one hand and a big bag of groceries in the other. She parked Yevgeny on the couch next to a very surprised Mickey, handed Mickey a coloring book and crayons from her purse, and walked to the kitchen before she started slamming cupboards and putting the groceries in the fridge. Mickey’s initial Southside reaction to jump up and fight the intruder instead of taking ahold of the coloring book and crayons he had been given had apparently been considerably impacted by the copious amounts of alcohol he had consumed that day, his tv-numbed mind and the fact that his heart had suddenly inserted itself into his throat, beating an unsteady and painful pace. Instead, Mickey awkwardly gawked at Svetlana for just walking in like she belonged, and then stared at the little kid sitting next to him as if he did this every other Saturday afternoon, still holding onto the coloring book and crayons.

Hearing Svetlana snort from the kitchen snapped him out of his own head and Mickey quickly handed over the book and crayons to Yevgeny, who smiled shyly at Mickey and carefully took his book from him, his little hand brushing Mickey’s to make sure the crayons didn’t fall. Yevgeny carefully set out his crayons on the coffee table in between the empty beer bottles and cigarette cartons before opening his book to a random page. He grabbed the red crayon, then put it back, chose the purple one instead and started coloring in a huge panda bear with the focus of a neurosurgeon.

As it was still early in the summer, Mickey had only put on a shirt and boxers that afternoon, but Yevgeny was wearing a blue jacket on top of a bright orange t-shirt, jeans and green sneakers. Mickey vaguely wondered where Svetlana had gotten the money to dress this boy in such vibrant colors as Yevgeny interrupted his coloring to take off his coat, folding it neatly on the armrest next to him. After watching Yevgeny color for a little while, Mickey got off of the couch and stiffly shuffled towards the kitchen, straightening the waistband of his boxers and messing with the hem of his shirt for no reason other than not knowing what to do with his hands. His heart had yet to slow down and he was having trouble breathing, confused as to whether he wanted to cry at having his kid sit on his couch like it was the most normal thing in the world, or laugh hysterically at the terrifying thought of being able to hold him after watching him grow up for 3 years behind glass.

Svetlana had just finished putting away the groceries in the fridge and straightened up to look at him from top to bottom, one eyebrow raising in silent judgment. She rolled her eyes at him and opened up a cupboard to grab a plate as she started off her monologue. “You will take him every other weekend. You will come get him after work Friday and drop him off Sunday at noon. If you stay here, you make sure brothers behave and don’t get drunk or do drugs in front of him. If you go to Ian, you sleep on couch. Understood? Now stop standing there like fucking idiot and make your son a sandwich while I clean this _disgusting_ kitchen.”

The soft giggle coming from the couch jolted Mickey out of his state of shock. Not trusting himself to know what to say, he walked up to Svetlana and hugged her awkwardly. She tensed a bit, then relaxed enough to return the hug for a moment before Mickey started pulling away in embarrassment. As he moved to turn away, she grabbed his face in her hands and turned him to face her straight on, looking deep into his bright, and conflicted, blue eyes. The look she gave him was not the pity he expected, but a loving smile he was not aware she was capable of. “He wants to know his father,” she said softly as she tapped him on the chin to make sure he was mentally present and listening. He nodded once before brushing away her hands so he could escape to the bathroom to get some breathing space.

The sound of Svetlana talking to Yevgeny in Russian drifted into the bathroom as Mickey splashed cold water on his face and tried taking deep, calming breaths, or whatever the hell you were supposed to be doing to prevent hyperventilation. He looked up at his face in the dirty mirror and felt the hysterical laughter bubbling up in the back of his throat as he recognized the look of terror in his own eyes. He was going to get to know his kid. He was going to spend time with his kid. He was going to take care of his kid, and for fuck’s sake, he was going to try and be a better dad than Terry was to him for this kid, though that wasn’t saying much. And to do that, he had to clean up his act, starting right then and there. After drying his face, finger-combing his hair and taking one last deep, calming _(or whatever)_ breath, he opened the bathroom door and felt a weight he hadn’t previously noticed lift off his shoulders. Having gotten his priorities forcefully reset, it took Mickey about a month to ease into a father-role both Svetlana and himself were comfortable with.

 

His second big hurdle, namely finding a legal job, had proven to be tedious at best, even with his record being wiped clean of the attempted-murder charges and his GED certificate in hand. Whether it was the last name, the ‘FUCK U-UP’ or his increasingly worsening mood, Mickey couldn’t find anyone willing to hire him for something other than washing dishes after a week of sporadic job interviews. Though he could probably live off of his wrongful-imprisonment-compensation check for a while, he didn’t want to touch too much of that money so he could use it to start a college fund for Yevgeny. Or a downpayment on a house. Or for whatever extracurricular expenses that pop up when shit would inevitably hit the fan.

After another morning of allowing himself to mope around the house, Mickey went for a walk beyond his usual stomping ground to see what else had changed in the 3 years he spent in hell. Though the immediate area hadn’t been affected much, it seemed that the hipster area further downtown had really gotten their gentrification on, and more construction was ongoing on what appeared to become a massive apartment building. Having absolutely nothing to lose in the job department, Mickey took a deep breath, schooled his expression into a moderately pleasant one, and walked up to the construction site until he saw someone that looked vaguely important and not too dirty. Half an hour later, he walked out with a new job, a starting date and time, and a genuine grin on his face.

Between the new job and (re-)learning to become a father, Mickey had made a schedule with Svetlana to slowly ease Yevgeny into getting used to the Milkovich house, and the Milkoviches themselves. Svetlana chaperoned the first few visits, and Mickey came over to Svetlana’s house when she deemed it appropriate for dinner and bedtime. Getting the Milkovich residence cleaned and kid-friendly had been tedious and time-consuming, but Mickey plowed through it as he didn’t want Yevgeny accidentally finding a gun or two lying around. Getting his brothers to keep the house clean proved to be the even bigger challenge.

An hour before Svetlana and Yevgeny were due to arrive for their first Milkovich Family Dinner, Mickey had a very serious talk with both of his brothers to at least _limit_ the swearing, smoking and drinking _(amongst other things)_ when Yevgeny was around. Five minutes later, both Milkoviches seemed to have already forgotten all about Mickey’s well-prepared speech, and he started wondering if threatening his brothers with bodily injury and a slow death would have been a more effective starting point, or if he should have just let Svetlana do the talking instead.

However, it turned out that Yevgeny's baby blue eyes and adorable laugh, backed up by a scowling Russian mother, were a much more effective means of persuasion than Mickey’s threatening glares. From the moment Svetlana and Yevgeny stepped into the house the Friday two weeks after Svetlana had come barging in unannounced, Iggy’s eyes lit up and even Jamie cracked a smile at the youngest Milkovich. Apparently Yevgeny looked so much like a mini-Mickey (disregarding the lighter hair color and the once-again _very_ colorful clothing) that, after the initial introductions had been made, both brothers loudly started reminiscing about the stupid shit a very young Mikhailo Milkovich had gotten himself into when he was about Yevgeny's age.

After a significant number of deeply embarrassing stories of things that Mickey himself could no longer remember doing, and a few he was pretty sure he hadn’t done, Svetlana cut off the latest story when it became apparent that, even at such a young age, Terry’s presence had already overshadowed the sweet innocence of his youngest children. Unfortunately, Yevgeny hadn’t picked up on the change of plans yet, and Jamie almost choked as he received the full blast of Yevgeny's sad, blue puppy-eyes for not being allowed to hear the last part of the story where Mickey had been hiding baby chickens in a box in the backyard. Though Mickey didn’t remember much of that time, he was pretty sure the story hadn’t ended with ‘the nice neighbour taking the chickens off their hands’ and probably with flying fists, screaming and a lot of little white feathers, but Svetlana seemed satisfied and had stopped glaring bullets into Jamie’s head from behind Yevgeny's enraptured face as the big brother wrapped up the story in a kid-friendly bow.

After dinner (spaghetti and meatballs), the whole gang watched tv on the couch for a bit before Svetlana and Yevgeny left to go home so the little boy could go to bed on time. Yevgeny shyly hugged each of his uncles goodbye, and then ran to Mickey to hug him too, squeezing him tight while hiding his face in Mickey’s shirt. Mickey tried to suppress his smile at the joy he felt from this little boy fitting so easily in his life, a feat he hadn’t thought possible until that very moment.

The remaining Milkoviches ended the night halfway in a bottle of whiskey while musing over their collectively lost childhoods and the adorableness that was Mini-Mickey Milkovich.

 

It was a month after Svetlana had come barging into the Milkovich house that Mickey’s heartaches re-introduced themselves into his life, forcefully. In a similar fashion as Svetlana’s re-entrance into his life, though this time with a knock on his front door, Ian appeared on his doorstep one fateful Saturday afternoon, completely unannounced. It appeared Svetlana (or Yevgeny) may have also discussed the interior of his fridge with Ian, because Ian was holding a bag of groceries in one hand. Mickey raised one eyebrow suspiciously as Ian grinned down at him outside his door.

“Does no one use a fucking phone anymore?” Mickey asked, deliberately staring at the bag of groceries instead of Ian’s face. Ian smiled and pushed past him into the living room towards the kitchen, sending shivers all through Mickey’s body as they touched.

“You realize you never gave me your new phone number, right?” Ian called from the kitchen, acting like it hadn’t been more than a month that he had last seen Mickey as he opened the fridge and started putting away groceries. Mickey was going to end up having to cook actual food if this shit kept up.

“You could have just asked Svet...” Mickey sighed, already resigning himself to having to deal with the redhead for a prolonged period of time as he closed and locked the front door and walked towards the kitchen, still avoiding Ian’s eyes. Svetlana could have at _least_ given him a head’s up about this so he could, what, shower or something.

“Maybe,” Ian said in a teasing voice as he leaned on the counter, that stupid smile still aimed at Mickey, lighting up his whole face in the process, “but what’s the fun in that, Mick.”

Mickey’s resolve not to look directly into Ian’s sparkly green eyes finally cracked, and he felt a wave of warmth spread over his body as his heart involuntarily sped up, watching Ian look at him with an expression akin to love on his face. Ian’s smile grew bigger, if that were even possible, and Mickey’s body betrayed his mind as his feet led him to Ian instead of staying still where he had told them to. He was helpless as his hands reached up to Ian’s face, softly tracing the sharp lines of his face as if trying to confirm what was in front of him before sliding into Ian’s hair, cupping the back of his neck and bringing his lips where they had wanted to be for 3 long, dark years. The remaining day, night, and morning-after passed by in their traditionally blissful fashion-- in their own little bubble, completely wrapped up in each other, leaving all the worries of the real world outside, consequences be damned.

 

After patching things up, breaking it off, talking things out, bitching and fighting and yelling and amazing make-up fucking, it didn’t take long before Mickey and Ian had a routine figured out that worked for Mickey’s 8-5 job, Ian’s rotating shifts and therapy, and Yevgeny's alternating weekend visits. Apparently Mickey was the only one surprised that Ian and him had gotten back together, because no one around him appeared to even blink twice about seeing Ian at his place in the mornings, him randomly mentioning Ian in a conversation, or Yevgeny asking where his ‘other dad’ was today.

The ease with which they had slotted their lives back together after his 3 years in prison and their brutal break-up would jerk Mickey awake at night, drenched in sweat, frantically wondering when the other shoe would drop. He would be snippy and annoyed in the morning, trying to figure out when Ian would realize this wasn’t what he wanted, where they would go wrong next and who could hurt Ian, Yevgeny or Svetlana. Ian would patiently wait out the storm, giving Mickey his space to figure out on his own that nothing excessively bad was going to happen or, if that took too long for his liking, to fuck the doubts out of his partner like his dick was an exceptionally talented physical therapist. Things would blow over and go back to normal until a slightly different version of Mickey’s doubts would resurface, and Ian would rinse and repeat because he understood very well where Mickey’s fears came from, given that he was the cause of most of them.

It wasn’t that everything was all rose petals and sunshine. Most of the time, they were all just trying to get through life one day at a time. Svetlana had her ups and downs, one time dumping Yevgeny at Mickey’s place for two whole weeks so she could ‘deal’ with a jealous ex who had only just figured out his Russian lover had been a whore in her younger years, and wasn’t happy with this information. Ian’s pills had to be adjusted once or twice, resulting in a tropical storm running through their apartment, but nothing as big and painful as the hurricanes he used to be. Mickey got fired and rehired and fired from the same construction company until Ian called up Sasha in a fit of rage, and Sasha laughed at him, wrote an _(in Ian’s eyes)_ particularly brilliant lawyer’s letter which resulted in Mickey getting rehired with a raise. The older Gallaghers took an exceptionally long time to ever-so-slightly warm up to Mickey, though Carl and Debbie had started coming by and eating his _(real)_ food on a regular basis under the pretense of visiting Ian or Yevgeny.

“Real food” was also a point of contention in Casa Milkovich-Gallagher. After Mickey had once succeeded in giving Yevgeny and himself food poisoning twice in one month, Svetlana had had enough of her kid ‘shitting pants at school because he’s too good to tell you your cooking is _shit’._ She launched what Yevgeny would end up calling the “Teach Dad How Not To Burn The Pasta” initiative, or Operation Pasta Dad, and three times a week for a couple of months, she and Yevgeny came over to Mickey and Ian’s apartment to teach him how to cook, family style. Svetlana had Mickey and Yevgeny put on their little aprons and clean, cut, dice, peel, chop, skin, slice, bake, boil and fry a number of items Mickey hadn’t even known existed. He used spices he had never heard of, determined that veggies were apparently not the Devil, and discovered that he _really_ didn’t like cutting a whole chicken, for no good reason other than it just being _gross_.

Though Mickey would never admit it to anyone’s face, he looked forward to cooking with Svetlana and Yevgeny a lot, more than he thought he would. After his initial apprehension of having to actually spend more than an hour preparing ingredients for a stew that needed half a day to cook while listening to Svetlana bitch at how bad he is at cutting carrots into identically sized cubes, he started to appreciate spending more time with her and Yevgeny, listening to Yevgeny talk about his day at school while he peeled a potato, hearing about a new song he really liked on the radio while drying dishes, helping Yevgeny with a particularly difficult math question after dinner.

Mickey would bitch and whine a bit to keep up pretenses, and Svetlana put up with his grumbling like a patient saint, directing and correcting her little minions around the kitchen as she tasted around and occasionally added a bit more of this and some more of that. Mickey knew for sure that Ian saw right through his grumble act, and Svetlana probably did as well. Yevgeny, on the other hand, kept up a steady stream of compliments at whatever Mickey was doing to encourage his dad. The little boy would invent games during cooking, such as who could slide a potato thinnest and who could last longest without crying while cutting onions. Turns out that Mickey was better at slicing, but Yevgeny always won the crying game.

One day, Yevgeny had gotten into a particularly nasty fight at elementary school, having punched a kid in the mouth the way his uncles had taught him, and then proceeded to pull this kid’s hair and scream his little face off. There had been so much blood that the school suspended Yevgeny for a week, and Mickey and Svetlana had to beg the principal to give him another chance, considering Yevgeny's lack of priors and his beautiful grades. At home, the otherwise very gentle Yevgeny had yelled at them that he never wanted to go back to school again and would stubbornly refuse to tell them why he had gotten into a fight in the first place until Svetlana threatened to stop letting him sleep over at Mickey and Ian’s place. Mickey had promptly freaked out and started opening his mouth to yell at Svetlana in his turn, but one sharp look from his ex-wife told him to sit down, shut the fuck up and let the Russians do what they do best.

Yevgeny had then started crying, ran over to Mickey, crawled onto his lap and hugged him tight around the neck, allowing snot to get all over the place. He started babbling and telling them that he wanted to sleep over at daddy and Ian’s and he was sorry and the stupid kid had said his dads were fags and that they should be shot on sight and he was so sorry and he would never get into a fight again and he was very sorry but the kid deserved it but he would never hit him again and not to leave him, daddy! It was all Mickey could do not to call his brothers right then and there and figure out where this kid’s parents lived, because this wasn’t something a kid had dreamed up themselves. Svetlana had grabbed him by the arm to keep him seated, knowing full well what an enraged Milkovich was capable of, but prioritizing her son’s unhappiness over Mickey’s, and her own, rightful anger.

Mickey softly bounced his son on his lap, telling him that everything was okay and he did good and not to worry about it while simultaneously stroking Yevgeny’s soft blonde hair and pondering murder. Once the crying had subsided, Svetlana promised Yevgeny that he would still be allowed to sleep over at daddy and Ian’s, but he should learn to pull his punches next time and aim for the stomach instead of the face. Yevgeny cracked a smile through his tear-and-snot-stained face and started practicing his karate moves in Mickey’s lap. He then wondered out loud if he could get a pair of nunchucks for his birthday ‘so he could be like daddy’s Ninja Turtle!’, referring to his favorite cartoon. Mickey just nodded as he put Yevgeny back on the floor to continue practicing with invisible nunchucks and woosh-woosh sounds, not trusting himself to say the right thing in that moment but letting Svetlana take over the parenting instead. Later that night, Ian would have to calm down a pacing papa bear in the living room before devising a plan with Svetlana on how to get back at that kid’s parents the subtle way around, instead of the Milkovich way of shooting up their car with AK-47s. A week later, the kid quietly transferred to a different school.

The Russians really did know best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With special thanks to my Beta and Omega.


	2. Mickey's Blues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ian’s face looked serious and a little sad. Mickey’s heart immediately dropped into his stomach, and he wondered if he was going to need to reopen his tab for the conversation to come because he knew exactly which 4 words would next be coming out of Ian’s mouth.
> 
> “We need to talk,” Ian said.
> 
> And there they were, those sweet words.

If it were Ian’s turn to tell the tale, he’d point out that, if there was anyone to blame for this whole situation, it was Mickey himself.

About a year and a bit after Mickey had been released from prison, and after a lot of searching, many late night discussions and a few mortgage calculations, Mickey and Ian had decided to use Mickey’s wrongful-imprisonment money to place a down payment on a small three-bedroom-two-bathroom apartment closer to Svetlana’s place and Yevgeny's school, in a slightly better part of town. The apartment building was old yet well-maintained, and there was a park nearby that Yevgeny liked to play in and a corner store that sold Mickey’s favorite flavour of Pringles. The apartment itself needed a bit of fixing up, but with Mickey’s recent experience and contacts in the construction industry, it was both doable and affordable. After finalizing the interior renovations and after Yevgeny had finished painting his room _(blue fading into purple, with hundreds of glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling)_ , they moved their meager belongings into the apartment and Svetlana and Ian went shopping for more secondhand furniture to fill up the rest, leaving Mickey at home to be bossed around by Yevgeny as they decorated his room.

The Friday after the ‘big’ move, on the last of Ian’s 3 consecutive night shifts and Yevgeny’s scheduled weekend sleepover, Mickey had decided he was going to ask Svetlana to let Yevgeny stay over more often during the week. He hadn’t discussed his ‘plan’ with Ian because he didn’t want Ian to get his hopes up in case it failed miserably, even though nothing in particular pointed in that direction, but it was always safer to keep your expectations low so you wouldn’t be disappointed all the time, or so Mickey liked to think.

For some strange reason, Mickey was extremely nervous about the whole situation. After coming home from work, he went to the grocery store with a god-honest grocery list to buy all the ingredients he needed to try and make something as close to Svetlana’s favorite dish as he could get for when she and Yevgeny came over for dinner that night. An hour and a cut in his left index finger later, Mickey was halfway through the recipe but had still not figured out how to even _start_ this conversation with Svetlana. While absently and sporadically moving a spoon back and forth through the pot, he tried sounding out the words he wanted to use, changing his tone of voice to see which fit better, his hand flailing aimlessly in the air in his search for _words_. The stirring started resembling a game of Pong as Mickey got more and more frustrated with not being able to find a combination of words and tone that sounded _just_ right. He briefly thought of calling Ian and asking his advice on the matter, but dismissed the thought and focused on finishing off the stew. Ian was better off not knowing that everything had gone to shit because of him.

Svetlana and Yevgeny arrived right on time. Since Operation Pasta Dad, Yevgeny had taken it upon himself to provide _(or at least suggest)_ dessert for the family dinners, and that night, Yevgeny was beaming in the doorway, holding a big bowl of pudding with jello pieces mixed in that he had made himself the previous day. As his son walked by, Mickey raised a questioning eyebrow in Svetlana’s direction at the choice of dessert, but she just shrugged, a look of amusement on her face.

Once dinner was served, Svetlana was the one surprised, two questioning eyebrows and a head-tilt indicating she knew something was going on but wasn’t going to get into it right at that moment as Yevgeny was excitedly talking about the upcoming school trip to the Children’s Museum. In between breathing and inhaling his food, Yevgeny kept up a steady stream of information about the games and exhibits that they would most likely see, and that new game his friend was planning on taking with them on the bus though it wasn’t allowed, and this new girl with the really nice curly hair he met on the bus a few days ago that was now his new best friend. As Svetlana stayed relatively quiet throughout the rant, still looking at him with a contemplative expression on her face, Mickey took it upon himself to prod Yevgeny on more information about this new friend _(‘her name is Tasha, and her hair is black like yours daddy, but very curly and it’s like a circle around her head. Can I go play at her house next week?’)_ and why games were no longer allowed on the bus _(‘Aidan and Erin got into a fight over it. There was lots of crying.’ ‘Why did he cry?’ ‘Who cry?’ ‘Aidan or Erin?’ ‘'Those are girls, they didn’t cry. Terry cried.’ ‘What did Terry have to do with it?!’)_.

When Svetlana reached for a second helping of the stew, Mickey couldn’t help but hide his satisfied grin into his beer bottle at the unspoken compliment. She smirked back and winked at him when he accidentally caught her eye, and he promptly choked in the sip of beer he had just taken as he started laughing. Yevgeny, always the helpful boy, quickly got out of his chair and painfully started smacking his dad on the back, telling him to _breeeathe_ , causing Mickey to choke in his laughter instead until Svetlana waved Yevgeny back into his seat. Oxygen eventually found its way back into Mickey’s lungs, and he was even more determined to plead his case to Svetlana. But maybe he should call Ian first. Maybe just a text? Nah, maybe later.

Though Mickey suspected Svetlana could see straight through him, as she usually did, he waited until after dinner to broach the subject. It was Yevgeny’s turn to pick out a movie as everyone got settled in on the couch with dessert. Within 10 minutes, his little head was lolled back against the couch and his  _(surprisingly tasty)_ bowl of pudding-and-jello threatened to slip out of his grasp to fall on the floor. Svetlana turned down the volume of the movie as Mickey got up to carefully pry Yevgeny’s bowl out of his hand and bring it to the kitchen, coming back with two beers.

Mickey handed Svetlana one of the beers and sat back down on the couch, watching Yevgeny’s kids movie for a few more minutes until neither him nor Svetlana could follow the plot anymore and she turned off the tv with a sigh. A few minutes passed in comfortable silence, Mickey and Svetlana lost in their own thoughts while drinking their beers with Yevgeny softly talking in his sleep in between them. When Mickey finished his beer, he handed the empty bottle to Svetlana so as not to jostle his kid too much. He slipped one arm underneath Yevgeny’s head and one under his knees, carefully and slowly lifting him off the couch even though he knew that the little boy probably wouldn’t even wake up if he accidentally dropped him. Mickey carried Yevgeny to his room, nudging open the door with his foot and placing him delicately on top of the bright, canary yellow comforter. For a few months now, Yevgeny had gotten into the habit of falling asleep and napping half an hour or so after dinner until he would wake up again to prepare for bed, so Mickey turned on the little night lamp on his nightstand and walked back out of the room, leaving the door ajar.

Svetlana was still sitting in the exact same spot on the couch when he returned, lost in thought and blankly staring at the black screen of the tv. He grabbed another beer from the fridge before sitting down next to her, taking a sip as he steeled his back to start the conversation he needed to have with the mother of his child. He took a deep breath and then another sip, trying to remember what sentence he had settled on to start the whole thing off. He subtly cracked his neck left and right, took another sip, and mentally heard Yevgeny cheer him on in the back of his head with that silly voice he did whenever Mickey was doing something Yevgeny thought was cheer-worthy. He licked his lips, took one more sip, realized he was halfway through the bottle, wondered if he should go get another one before starti--

“You will have him every other week, _ёбаный в рот_ Mickey…”

Mickey’s mind went quiet. He snuck a peek at Svetlana from the corner of his eye before turning his head slowly, not wanting to disrupt whatever magical moment had just happened when Svetlana read his mind and decided to do the hard part for him. Svetlana looked at him with pursed lips and rolled her eyes, taking a sip from her beer and grimacing as she realized it had gone warm and therefore disgusting. She put the bottle on the table with a soft clink and sighed dramatically.

“Ian already ask me two days ago if Yevgeny could stay over during the week, but I guess this is solo mission instead of communication between parents, hm?”

Mickey’s mouth fell open, not able to believe that Ian had gone behind his back to-- _well_ , to do the exact same thing he had been planning to do. Mickey then quickly shut his mouth, not having missed Svetlana’s sarcastic tone and judgmentally raised eyebrow at the lack of communication between him and Ian, but also because he was secretly pleased that Ian had wanted the same thing as him, and had obviously succeeded where he had difficulty getting the words out of his mouth. He grinned, and Svetlana took one look at Mickey’s smug face before grabbing her beer bottle and getting off the couch, letting out an audible groan at the silliness that had become her life ever since Mickey had gotten out of prison. Sometimes it felt like she had three sons instead of one.

With Svetlana in the kitchen and Yevgeny still napping, no one could see Mickey’s bowed head, his eyes crinkling with happiness as his smile started hurting his cheeks, and a soft chuckle echoing in his chest. Maybe he should call Ian after all.

That night, Mickey was extremely happy that Yevgeny was such a heavy sleeper as he _thoroughly_ thanked Ian for having had the same idea as him.

 

* * *

 

To Ian, seeing Mickey with Yevgeny was as close to magic as he would get. The grungy, dirty and closed-off Southside boy he had fallen in love with so many years ago would completely fade away into this loving, caring and protective father the moment his son walked through the door. It wasn’t that Mickey had stopped swearing and could still only cook about 6 dishes that Svetlana had taught him and would occasionally need to be restrained from starting a stupid bar fight for no good reason. Mickey wasn’t so much a ‘changed man’ as that it had required the unconditional love of someone he fully trusted for Mickey to completely come out of his shell. And that someone was Yevgeny.

Ian knew that Mickey loved him as well, a lot, as close to unconditional as he could get without being Yevgeny. But Ian had hurt Mickey, _badly_. He had broken him and taken away his hope and ripped his heart and soul to pieces and neglected to put it back together time and time again. Ian would forever and always have the ability to completely destroy Mickey, and because he had proven to be willing and able to do so, Mickey’s love for Ian would always hold a virtually undetectable sliver of doubt and fear. But that never stopped Ian from loving Mickey, from proving every single day that he would never leave him again, never stop trying for him and never stop loving him. It was the daily challenge that Ian wanted to have for the rest of his life until one day, he would have healed the wounds he had placed upon Mickey’s soul. It didn’t matter to him how long it would take, because if Ian was one thing, it was a stubborn asshole who would get what he wanted. And he wanted Mickey. And then some.

The ‘some’ Ian wanted was an idea he had been toying with for a while. The ‘how’ he had to work on.

It took Ian about a year, a lot of rationalizing, a few arguments and a whole lot of blowjobs, to get Mickey to warm up to the initial idea. They were in a good place as a family, both financially and psychologically, but Ian had been progressively feeling that something was missing, that he wanted something _more_. Mickey had jokingly suggested to get a dog instead, but Ian had just fucked that joke straight out of Mickey’s mind until he lay panting underneath him, readily agreeing to every word Ian said.

It then took one almost disastrous pre-Christmas celebration with the 4 of them and Mandy to convince Svetlana. Ian was never sure if Svetlana had seen straight through his plans, as she generally could, and she would never tell him when he asked. Yevgeny had been allowed to pick out a Christmas tree with aunt Mandy and they had decorated it in random (and very brightly) colored tinsels and Christmas lights while chewing on the candy canes that were supposed to go in the tree. Mickey and Svetlana had spent most of the afternoon cooking traditional Russian food for Christmas, and though Mickey had probably slowed Svetlana down more than helped her, his willingness to help in the kitchen never ceased to butter her up for things to come.

Ian had had to work the afternoon shift, so he only came home after all the tree decorating and food preparations had already finished. He caught Yevgeny as he ran at him and twirled him around in a circle, greeted the ladies with a hug and a smooch on the cheek and gave Mickey a soft kiss on the lips and a smile. The domesticity, the holiday cheer and the smell of amazing homemade food was enough to mellow out even the worst of a Russian mother’s moods, and Svetlana was relaxed and happy as she sat on the couch next to a giggling Mandy, both women having already started on the mulled wine.

Mickey was in the middle of some story about this guy he knew from the new construction site, screwing up something or the other that he then quickly fixed before they were both found out, and Mandy had grabbed Yevgeny and was bouncing him on her lap till he giggled. After Ian had come back from their bedroom to change out of his work clothes, Mickey had said something funny enough to get both Mandy and Svetlana to giggle uncontrollably. He stopped at the entrance of the hallway, a little separate from the group so he could take this mental image of the carefree happiness flowing from the scene in front of him. Then he remembered he had an actual phone in his pocket and took a few pictures for good measure.

Later that night, while Mickey, Mandy and Yevgeny were washing and drying the dishes, Ian and Svetlana sat on the couch, watching the Christmas lights turn on and off to the annoying sound of the same Christmas song that had been playing all night because it was Yevgeny's (current) favorite song in the world. Svetlana turned to Ian and smiled, a knowing look in her eyes. She knew he was up to something, probably had known he had been up to something since he walked through the door, but she had given him his time and space to figure out if he really wanted what he was going to ask her. It was annoying sometimes to have Svetlana look through you like water, but Ian smiled back, threw his arm around her shoulder and pulled her in for a sideways hug. She allowed it for a few seconds before pushing him off and turning sideways to face him directly, an amused look on her face.

“Out with it, carrot boy, we don’t have all night,” she said with a smirk.

“I don’t know what you’re-” Ian started, but Svetlana poked him hard in his full stomach and he couldn’t help but laugh as he swatted away her hand. “Okay, fine. Do you want the long story or the short one?”

She raised an eyebrow and looked towards the kitchen to check how far the Milkoviches were with the dishes. Mandy had just started flicking soap suds at Mickey and Yevgeny, and an all-out soap fight would most likely be breaking out in the next few seconds. 

“Start with the short and we’ll see if I need convincing.”

Ian nodded. Swallowed. Took a deep breath and looked up at Svetlana’s increasingly entertained face.

“We want to have another baby. With you.”

To Svetlana’s credit, she didn’t burst out laughing. Neither did she scowl, or swear at him in Russian, or punch him in the face - all potential scenarios he had imagined in his head. Honestly, the only visible reaction Ian got was one eyebrow arching up slightly before coming back down. She really had the whole poker face thing down. As she didn’t respond to Ian’s ‘short story’, he figured he could start with the convincing part. He put on his biggest puppy-eyes and looked at his hands in his lap as he started into the monologue he had had prepared for a few weeks now.

“I know you no longer do the guest womb thing, and you’re pretty much settled and doing your own thing but… I want to have a baby with Mickey. I want to be there for its first steps and see Mickey’s face when it says its first words and I want to do the whole thing right-” Svetlana’s eyebrow raised, and Ian almost choked, “-not that Yev isn’t amazing, he’s perfect! Have you seen him! He’s the reason why I want another baby in the first place, though I can’t imagine any other baby being as perfect as he is!”

She smiled. It took a whole 2 minutes of Ian monologuing through why they wanted another baby and how good they would be as a family together before Svetlana waved her hand in his face to shut him up.

“Who would be the biological father?” she asked.

“Mickey,” Ian immediately responded. “I don’t want to risk accidentally giving any child what I have. I don’t want anyone to go through what I had to.”

Svetlana nodded, looking satisfied with at least that part of the reasoning. “And who would have custody of this child?”

Ian bit his lip, not knowing what the right answer to this question was. He looked back at the kitchen to see the Milkoviches finishing up with the dishes, Yevgeny bargaining Mandy for one more cookie as she held him in her arms.

“I- well…  us, full-time preferably. It would of course be Yevgeny's full sibling, and we definitely are not cutting Yev out or anything, and he’ll be a little olde and he can come by on your schedule whenever you want, but… we want this child to be with us.”

He paused, nervously biting his lip again as he tried to read any expression off Svetlana’s face.

“We could pay you, if you want?”

 _That_ statement got an immediate reaction, though not the one he was hoping for. Anger flared up in her face and she physically recoiled from him, moving a little further away from him on the couch. Ian moved forward to touch her but stopped his hand just shy of her shoulder and pulled back, dropping them in his lap and trying not to yell at himself or cry. He had fucked it up. It had been going so well and in one swift move, he had fucked up the whole thing forever.

Svetlana settled down again, but not before shooting him a furious look. Mickey said something to Yevgeny, and Yevgeny's soft giggle in reply softened Svetlana’s face to that of only mild rage. “Do not insult me, Gallagher,” she started, and Ian was already opening his mouth to apologize when she faced him again and shook her head slightly. At that moment, Yevgeny ran into the living room with a cookie in each hand, and gleefully handed one over to each of them. Ian smiled and pulled him in close, kissing the boy on the head before Yevgeny bounded off again to run around the couch in search of a toy. Svetlana followed Yevgeny with her eyes, pointedly looking at everything but Ian, and he felt his chances of having another child diminishing to zero.

Mickey and Mandy joined them again in the living room, Mandy’s hair looking worse for wear and Mickey’s face sparking with innocent mischief. As Mickey grinned at Ian, he noticed Ian’s somber expression and tilted his head in a silent question. Ian shook his head slightly to tell Mickey not to worry about it, and tried to smile again to show that everything was alright, just peachy! Just as Mickey opened his mouth to say something about it, Yevgeny came back with his Christmas music box that he had been playing all night (and Mandy had tried to hide so they would stop having to listen to the same Christmas song over and over again), and happily announced that they were now going to listen to his favorite song. Heavy sighs were heard all around the living room.

It wasn’t until Svetlana and Yevgeny were hugging everybody goodbye at the front door that Svetlana directly looked at Ian again, taking his face in her hands and bringing him to her level to kiss his cheek. Her soft smile was back, and Ian’s heart started thumping painfully in his chest, nervously awaiting her next words. She took one sideways look at Mickey twirling Yevgeny around to make him laugh _(it was his new favorite thing)_ and whispered in Ian’s ear, “I’ll think about it.”

 

* * *

 

It took Svetlana 3 months to get pregnant. It took Mickey 3 months, 1 week and 4 days to start feeling exceptionally but undeniably guilty.

Mickey was never one to feel terribly guilty about the things he did, having grown up with a rather grey moral compass due to his environment. It’s not that he went around flicking babies in the face or decapitating cats for fun; it’s just that he could easily push away feelings of guilt when they were inconvenient, which was pretty much all the time. But the guilt he felt over Svetlana’s pregnancy was not something he could push away, even though he tried all the conventional methods he had perfected for years; ignoring the issue, drinking away the issue, starting a fight about something completely unrelated to take his mind off the issue, but for some reason, the guilt didn’t want to stay out of sight and out of mind.

It wasn’t so much that Svetlana was pregnant and in minor discomfort; he could handle all of that and then some. What screwed with his head was his own constant comparison between his own new-baby-behavior to that of his behaviour during Svetlana’s pregnancy with Yevgeny. Considering his current relationship with his son, he felt that being nice to Svetlana, going to doctor’s appointments with her and buying her folic acid was showing preferential treatment to his unborn child over Yevgeny. He wasn’t going to stop doing it, but he was just going to feel like shit about it when he did it. He had never given a shit about Yevgeny when he was still inside of Svetlana, and even as a newborn, he had preferred to be nowhere near the baby. Back then, he hadn’t even considered being at an ultrasound or a check up, if there had been any, and definitely not at the delivery. Now, he was internally gushing over the baby-Milkovich-to-be whenever Svetlana’s hand as much as hovered over her belly. It was as bittersweet as bittersweet could get.

Yevgeny, on the other hand, was the happiest and proudest 7-year-old this world had ever seen, or so it seemed to Mickey. From the moment the 3 of them had told him that he was going to be a big brother, it had become the opening line to every conversation he started. Everyone at school knew, everyone at the playground knew, everyone at soccer knew, and even the cashiers at the supermarket all knew that his mom and daddies were having a baby and he was going to be a big brother. Surprisingly, no one ever tried to correct him when he said his _daddies_ were having a baby, though that may have had something to do with either a glaring Russian or a knuckle-cracking Milkovich eyeing the adults who threatened to pop Yevgeny's bubble of happiness with such semantics.

The only one happier with Svetlana’s growing belly than Yevgeny was Ian. It almost seemed like Svetlana’s pregnancy glow had transferred over to him, because Ian was radiant from the moment Svetlana had told them that she’d do it. He had practically skipped to the fertility clinic, giggled giddily as Mickey masturbated into a plastic cup and fluttered his eyelashes at the receptionist when they were making their next appointment. Ian coddled over Svetlana’s belly, spoke to the 2-month lump of cells in a soft and deep voice, and pampered Svetlana as much as she could handle before swatting away his hands and walking over to another chair. Mickey figured that the new-pregnancy-mood would eventually let up again, but Ian just kept powering through in total bliss.

His glow was so apparent that the older Gallaghers had taken Mickey aside and asked him if Ian had been sleeping okay, if he was hypersexual, if he was taking his pills on time. Mickey had initially been pissed off at them for even insinuating that Ian may be manic, but he could also rationally see their point considering Ian’s drastic change in behavior. He reassured them that Ian was fine, taking his meds on time and still seeing his therapist, but that he was just happy. Ecstatic, even. But Ian was absolutely fine.

Mickey was absolutely not fine. Mickey started visibly freaking out 5 months into the pregnancy. Svetlana’s belly was very noticeably showing, friends and family were constantly asking how she was doing and his guilt was weighing down on him to the point that he secretly started chain-smoking again, which made him feel even more guilty. Ian’s constant happiness was starting to get on his nerves, and he had to force himself to smile whenever Yevgeny's proud big brother attitude bubbled up. He started spending a little more time at the bar, a few more hours of overtime a week at work, taking his time doing groceries, anything to avoid tainting Ian’s happy mood. His disappearing act had unfortunately not gone completely unnoticed.

Ian found Mickey at the bar at 8 pm on a weekday. Yevgeny wasn’t staying with them that week, so it wasn’t too big of a deal, but Ian had come home from work a little earlier than usual to an empty house and decided that enough was enough. Walking through the entrance, Ian could see Mickey sitting at the bar, nursing a beer and overall not interacting with anyone. He slid into the chair next to Mickey and watched as Mickey’s body language turned defensive, not knowing who had sat down next to him but not inviting any conversation or wanting anyone to approach him.

“You come here often, sweet cheeks?” Ian whispered seductively as he leaned forward towards Mickey. Mickey’s body immediately relaxed as he closed his eyes and a grin pulled at his lips.

“I thought you weren’t getting out of work until later,” he said as he waved over the bartender to clear his tab before turning to face Ian. Despite his previous quip, Ian’s face looked serious and a little sad. Mickey’s heart immediately dropped into his stomach, and he wondered if he was going to need to reopen his tab for the conversation to come because he knew exactly which 4 words would next be coming out of Ian’s mouth.

“We need to talk,” Ian said.

And there they were, those sweet words. Mickey cast down his eyes and sighed, handing over some bills to the bartender before getting up off the chair. He didn’t want to have _this_ talk at the bar. He didn’t want to have this talk period, but at least at home he could be reasonably certain that he wouldn’t accidentally start a physical fight with someone just to get _out_ of this talk that could possibly end him in jail. Suddenly realizing the consequences to  _this_ talk, Mickey’s heart started pounding frantically as his fight or flight instinct kicked in, his hands gripping onto the edge of the bar as he tried to get himself to breathe slower, to calm down a bit. Once he was fairly sure he wouldn’t start hyperventilating right then and there, he let go of the bar and power walked to the front door, Ian calming trailing behind him.

Mickey further calmed down as the crisp fall air cooled his face, slowing down so Ian knew he was okay again. They walked home in silence, walked into their building in silence and walked to the elevator in silence. Mickey wanted to get this talk over with as soon as possible, but also dreaded ever having to start this conversation to begin with. Ian had seemed content to just walk alongside him on the way home, but as they took the elevator up to their floor, Mickey could see the stress building in Ian’s shoulders. Ian started fidgeting with his jacket and rubbing his nose, and the suddenly claustrophobic feeling of the small elevator was putting Mickey on edge even more. He practically ran out of the elevator the moment the doors opened, and fumbled with his keys to their front door. Ian’s fingers were drumming a very annoying rhythm on his leg, and Mickey couldn’t help but want to slap that hand so it would stop moving so loudly. He finally got the door open, kicked off his shoes and ripped off his jacket before walking into the kitchen to get a beer. Ian disappeared into the bathroom after a few seconds, and Mickey took a deep breath as he leaned his forehead against the cool metal of the fridge. This was going to be a long night.

When Ian walked out of the bathroom, Mickey was sitting on the couch, beer in hand and staring into the distance. Ian allowed himself a few more deep breaths before sitting next to his lover and putting a hand on his thigh. He sighed, just wanting to get this over with.

“Should we put the baby up for adoption?”

Mickey almost spilled his beer as he jerked himself up to face Ian. Two scared blue eyes faced him as Ian struggled to understand whether this was a positive or negative reaction to his question. It took Mickey several more seconds to get his tongue to work to form a proper sentence.

“W- WHAT?!” was (un)fortunately all that came out. Ian sighed deeply and aimlessly waved a hand around in Mickey’s general direction. 

“I said, should we put the baby up for adoption?” he repeated softly.

Mickey shook his head as if getting rid of cobwebs in his mind and a shiver ran through his body for no good reason.

“Yeah, I fucking heard you the first time. Where the _hell_ is this coming from?!” he exclaimed as he got up off the couch and downed the rest of his beer in one go. He then stomped off to the kitchen and threw the can into the sink before running his hands roughly through his hair in frustration. Whatever he had thought Ian wanted to talk about had _not_ been this. He knew he was probably overreacting a little, but the immense burst of adrenaline in his system was not allowing his head to cool down enough to rationally think about his every action.

Ian had flinched at Mickey’s harsh tone and jumped even harder at the sound of the can hitting the sink. He wasn’t afraid that Mickey would hurt him, but the reaction to his question had been considerably more violent than he had otherwise expected. He slowly got off the couch and faced Mickey’s general direction without making an attempt to actually walk towards the man that was pacing the width of their kitchen. He tried to school his face into a more neutral expression and waited until Mickey’s pacing went from lethal to merely dangerous.

“You just don’t seem to be happy about the new baby, Mick, that’s all,” Ian all but whispered, but Mickey was highly attuned to everything Ian said, and his admission sparked a flame of rage inside him. All of his guilt and doubts and carefully contained self-loathing burst to the surface until he was consumed by the need to _RUN, RUN, RUN_. It was all he could do not to grab his jacket and shoes and just leave the apartment to never come back. Just get out of the claustrophobic space and breathe in the night air and smoke a pack or two and maybe drown in a bottle of whiskey while he was at it. He swung around to face Ian in all of his rage, and the wind was promptly taken right out of his sails.

Ian was sitting on the armrest of the couch, bent forward with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, his body softly shaking from silent sobs. Mickey could see the tears running down Ian’s wrists and disappearing into the sleeves of his sweater as he softly cried. He didn’t remember walking towards Ian, but suddenly he was on his knees in front of him, stroking the tears from Ian’s face while his own tears freely flowed down his own face. Ian’s expression all but broke his heart as he gasped and fell down into Mickey’s arms, holding onto him for dear life as their bodies shook from Ian’s heartache. Mickey peppered the side of Ian’s face with soft kisses as he whispered soft words he would not be able to recall later, anything to stop what was happening, to make what he had done to Ian go away. Ian hiccuped a few times before his breathing slowed down, and they sat on the floor for a little while longer until Mickey started complaining about Ian’s dead weight and the fact that he was a giant sitting on an ant. Ian let out a wet snort, and snot sprayed on Mickey’s neck which made Ian laugh even harder. Mickey jokingly complained about the mucus infestation in his neck, and Ian wiped off Mickey’s neck with his sleeve before wiping his nose with the same. After Ian wriggled off of Mickey’s lap and helped Mickey get up, Mickey grabbed Ian by the back of the neck and brought him in for an ultimately wet and more snot-infested kiss. Ian softly pushed Mickey away so he could breathe again through his mouth and gave Mickey a watery smile.

“I dont-”, Mickey started, not really knowing how to articulate his 8 months of misery in a way that wouldn’t bring down Ian’s happiness, though most of that was far too late now, “I’m not-” 

“It’s okay,” Ian interrupted, shaking his head and stroking Mickey’s cheek with his thumb, “you don’t have to-”

“No, it’s not okay!” Mickey exclaimed, immediately regretting it as Ian took a small step away from him.

“It’s not,” he repeated, this time in a calmer voice, his hand reaching forward to grab Ian’s sweater and pull him closer, feeling the sudden need to touch Ian. “I _do_ want to have this baby, I _am_ happy, it’s just that…”

He dropped his hands from Ian's sweater and reached out for his hands instead. Ian intertwined their fingers and brought them to Mickey’s back, effectively trapping him in Ian’s arms.

“I was such an asshole to Svet when she was pregnant with Yev,” Mickey continued, “I just- I can’t take that back. And now there’s a new baby, and I can’t-, I just…” He shook his head in frustration at not being able to find the right words to put it all out there, and Ian kissed him softly on the cheek.

“You feel guilty for being happy about the new baby because you were a dick to Svet after your dad forced her to rape you and she got pregnant with Yev...?” Ian asked softly, pulling back a little to try and catch the expression in Mickey’s eyes.

Mickey snorted and tried to pull away, but Ian moved in even closer and pinned the back of Mickey’s legs against the couch so he couldn’t run from this conversation any longer.

“I mean, if you want to put it that way…”

“I do,” Ian said as he untwined their hands and snaked his hands underneath Mickey’s shirt, caressing his back and moving their bodies closer, “and I am. Your behavior towards Svet then was not so much your fault as a result of the circumstances you were in. You turned it around, remember? When she and Nika lived with us, before I-.” Ian paused abruptly, his whole body freezing as he swallowed and tried to continue his sentence. “Before I fucked it all up.”

Mickey sighed deeply, thinking that it was a good thing that they were both so screwed up that they could bring the other back down out of the hole they made for themselves. He pushed Ian away a bit so he could look him in the eyes, knowing the look of shame he would find in them.

“You were sick, Ian. You didn’t fuck up any more than I did. Something was bound to happen, and if it wasn’t you, it would have been something else. But it wasn’t your fault. _That_ was never your fault...”

Ian took a deep breath and let it out slowly before leaning forward and kissing Mickey’s neck. A shiver ran through Mickey’s body as Ian spoke into his skin.

“I- I know. I do, I know. But it wasn’t your fault either. And feeling guilty about it now isn’t going to improve what happened then. Or improve what’s happening now, if you hadn’t noticed.”

Mickey dropped his forehead on Ian’s shoulder and groaned softly, all of his muscles suddenly feeling very tired.

“You think your therapist has a spot for me in your busy schedule?”

Ian laughed, and he dropped a kiss on Mickey’s neck before untangling himself from Mickey and pulling him towards their bedroom.

 

It took Mickey two more days to gather up the courage to apologise for his shitty behaviour to Svetlana. It was one of their scheduled family-dinner-nights, and Ian would be working a late shift and not coming home until after midnight. He found her casually lounging on their couch while Yevgeny was doing homework on the coffee table. Mickey paused at the door before mentally punching himself for being both a dick _and_ a pussy, and took off his shoes and jacket. He said hi to Yevgeny, who only looked up from his homework long enough to give him a half-aware wave, and sat down next to Svetlana before turning to look at her. One eyebrow was already raised as she waited patiently for him to spit out whatever it is he was clearly holding in. He hated that she always knew. He didn’t know if he wanted to do it with Yevgeny present, but he also knew he had to do it right now before he found some other excuse to wait even longer and screw things up again.

He leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling while the words came tumbling out of his mouth. “I’m sorry I’ve been a dick lately, I’m sorry I was a dick when you were pregnant with Yev, and I’ll do better in the future,” he rattled off in a single breath.

A moment of silence followed before Svetlana burst out into laughter so hard it made both Yevgeny and Mickey jump where they were seated. Yevgeny just gave Mickey a vaguely confused look before muttering something that sounded like _‘adults’_ , shaking his head and pointedly returning his focus on his homework. Mickey then turned to Svetlana to figure out what the hell the pregnancy hormones had done to an otherwise relatively rational woman.

Svetlana was wiping tears from her eyes as she turned back to Mickey and poked him in the shoulder with a sharp nail. “You were piece of shit husband and piece of shit dad, and that was the biggest piece of shit apology I ever heard in my life,” she started, one eyebrow raised and a smirk still pulling on her lips. “But I forgive you for being dick. You’re not a big piece of shit dad anymore anyway.”

Mickey felt that was about as close as Svetlana would ever get to outright complimenting him on his parenting in this lifetime, and the tension slowly drained from his shoulders. Svetlana gave him a knowing smile and put her feet up on the coffee table, much to Yevgeny’s chagrin as he glared at his mother and shoo-ed her feet away from his homework. Svetlana leaned back into the couch, sighed deeply and waved her hand in Mickey's general direction.

“Now massage my feet, this baby is heavier than you two combined.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With special thanks to my Beta, my Omega, and those who (politely) kick my ass into finishing chapters.


	3. And a star was born

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ian gleefully bounced around the house on the days leading up to the appointment, smirking every time he looked at the appointment card on the fridge, happily smacking Mickey whenever anything baby-related showed up on tv (which was ridiculously often) and loudly contemplating baby names in bed when Mickey was trying to fall asleep.  
> But Mickey endured the glee and sappiness, happily complained about bruises on his milky white skin, and trying out alternative ways to make Ian sleepy at night.

The only reason it took them so long to figure out the sex of the baby was because it took Ian and Mickey’s work schedules weeks to sync up for a shared visit. Ian gleefully bounced around the house on the days leading up to the appointment, smirking every time he looked at the appointment card on the fridge, happily smacking Mickey whenever anything baby-related showed up on tv _(which was ridiculously often)_ and loudly contemplating baby names in bed when Mickey was trying to fall asleep. Yevgeny was spending longer periods of time at their apartment now that Svetlana’s rapidly growing belly was making her more and more tired _(though Mickey privately thought she was just milking the situation for all its worth)_ , so when Yevgeny would loudly join in for the big-brother-fun because of course he was coming to the ultrasound as well, the house would occasionally start to feel a little too small for the quietly brooding Mickey. But Mickey endured the glee and sappiness, happily complained about bruises on his milky white skin, and trying out alternative ways to make Ian sleepy at night.

Ian had taken a whole day off for the appointment, picking up Yevgeny from school and ushering Svetlana from her apartment. Mickey came home early around 3 pm for them all to be ushered into a taxi and driven to the doctor’s office so they could be on time. Svetlana sat up front while the three of them were squished in the backseat, Ian and Yevgeny literally bouncing up and down and Yevgeny occasionally hitting Mickey’s knee or thigh with his elbow. Mickey bit back a curse as Yevgeny came mighty close to elbowing him in the crotch, shooting a glare at Ian who just smiled even brighter and smooched Yevgeny loudly on the forehead.

The waiting area wasn’t any better. They arrived 3 minutes early, but had to wait longer than usual for the nurse to call on them. Yevgeny was bouncing off the walls at that point, and Ian had engaged him in a bet about the sex of the baby to stop Yevgeny from going to the receptionist for the 5th time to ask when the doctor could give them the sexy of the baby already, please. Even Svetlana, though usually the role model of composure and patience at doctor’s appointments, was quietly smiling at Yevgeny and Ian’s banter. Just as Ian and Yevgeny shook on the terms of their bet _($20 for Ian if it was a boy, $20 for Yevgeny if it was a girl)_ , the nurse came around to collect ‘the Milkovich-Gallagher family’. Ian grinned at Yevgeny’s excited squeal, and the 4 of them followed the nurse into the ultrasound room.

It all happened pretty quickly from there. Svetlana was laid back on the chair, cold gel was squirted onto her belly and 4 pairs of eyes were eagerly looking at the world’s tiniest screen to see if they could figure out whether the technician was pointing at a leg or a head. Yevgeny's nose was almost pressed onto the screen, pointing towards parts of the baby and asking the technician what this was and was that a leg and where was its head until Svetlana softly told him to back up a little so the technician could see the screen again. Ian was holding Mickey’s right hand and Svetlana’s left hand, and squeezed both of them whenever the baby moved around on the monitor.

Mickey was trying his hardest to appear calm. He had attended a good number of the other doctor’s appointments, one of the earlier ultrasounds and studied all of the pictures Ian or Svetlana brought home, but finally being able to _see_ the baby take shape was akin to watching Yevgeny grow up from behind the glass in prison. The on-screen movement made Mickey feel the strange urge to reach out and touch Svetlana’s belly to feel the baby move for himself, something he had only ever done once when Svetlana had forcefully grabbed him by the wrist so he could feel the baby kick a few weeks ago. He took a quick peek at Svetlana’s belly right when the baby kicked out, and could see the outline of a little foot appear in Svetlana’s skin. He tried to hold in his laugh at the tiny foot trying to break through, but a mangled snort came out anyway which he unsuccessfully tried to cover up with a subtle cough.

When the baby was properly positioned and Yevgeny's face was no longer obscuring the screen, the technician softly hummed and pressed a button to pause the image. Ian drew a sharp breath and unconsciously dug his nails into the palm of Mickey’s hand as his eyes moved from the technician’s mouth to the screen back to the technician’s mouth to make the words come out faster. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking at, but it looked a lot like-

“Congratulations, it’s a girl.”

Ian unexpectedly burst into tears, scaring the bejeezus out of both Svetlana and Mickey, while Yevgeny punched the air and danced around the room. The technician smiled softly and left the room to give them a moment to themselves. Ian quickly composed himself as Svetlana drew him into a hug, and Ian pulled Mickey along into it sideways. Yevgeny jumped in from the other side and Svetlana kissed him softly on the head.

“You’re going to get baby sister, Yev,” she said as she messed up his hair a little.

Yevgeny couldn’t stop smiling as he softly petted his mother’s belly, getting a handful of gel for his efforts. He grimaced, wiped his hand on his pants and then kissed the non-gel-covered part of Svetlana’s belly before laying his ear on it to listen to the baby. A moment later, he yelped as the baby had apparently kicked him straight in the temple. So much for sisterly love.

Svetlana grabbed Mickey by the wrist and put his hand on the spot the baby had just kicked. Ian put his hand right next to Mickey’s, and they both waited with bated breath to see if the baby-- if _she_ would kick again. A few tense seconds later, the baby came back for round two and kicked Mickey right in the pinkie. He grinned widely and looked at Ian, who was clearly willing the baby to kick him next by the way he was intently staring at his hand and softly spurring on the baby. Mickey then turned to Svetlana, who was gazing down at them with a unfamiliarly soft and loving expression on her face. A tear slid down her cheek as she smiled at him, and it was all he could do not to tear up along with her when the baby finally kicked Ian in the hand as well, and Ian high fived Yevgeny with his other hand.

A knock on the door signaled that the technician was back to clean up Svetlana’s belly and give them the DVD and pictures of the baby’s ultrasound. In the taxi on the way back, Yevgeny cooed over the pictures by pointing out which part was the head and the arms and the legs. Ian corrected him a few times (' _I don’t think the leg is that close to her head')_ , but was otherwise content to sit back and let Yevgeny ramble on to the poor taxi driver.

Mickey had sunken deep into his own thoughts as he suddenly started seeing Svetlana in a completely different light; not just as the mother of his son and soon-to-be daughter, but as an extraordinary human vessel that grew a beautiful little life within her. The universe expanded and he felt small, his heart contracting and his emotions all over the place. As they got out of the taxi, he started feeling claustrophobic, anxiety creeping up on him, ants crawling on his skin, and he wondered if he was going to burst out in laughter or start crying, because he also didn’t feel in control over any of his thoughts. A rogue and irrational thought comparing him and a newborn Yevgeny with Terry and a newborn Mickey caused goosebumps to break out over his body and the hair on the back of his neck to stand up. He walked away trying to get rid of the white noise following him around, trying to find somewhere it couldn’t go, couldn’t take him-- 

Ian’s voice saying his name snapped him out of his own head, suddenly realizing he was standing in the foyer of their building with Ian’s hands on either side of his face. Ian was patiently waiting for him to return to the present, and having done so, let go of Mickey’s face and grabbed his hand to drag him into the elevator. Still a bit absent-minded, Mickey vaguely wondered why Svetlana and Yevgeny weren’t there as Ian slammed him into the elevator wall while the doors were still closing. Mickey opened his mouth while still thinking of what to say when Ian full-on attacked Mickey’s lips, his tongue finding Mickey’s and kissing him with an urgency Mickey hadn’t felt from him in a long time. The epiphanies in Mickey’s mind were quickly set aside as Mickey’s body reacted before his mind could figure out what was going on, responding in kind, his hands following the angles of Ian’s back up to his shoulders, pulling Ian closer and running his nails down Ian’s back to make his lover’s body shiver. Someone had managed to take off Ian’s belt right as the elevator got to their floor, though Mickey wouldn’t be able to tell you who pressed their floor button, and they stumbled out together, not wanting to break the kiss but realizing that the quicker they could get into their apartment, the quicker all the pesky layers could come off. Mickey broke away while Ian attached his lips to Mickey’s neck, and a soft moan escaped as he struggled to find the right fucking key to put in the tiniest freaking keyhole in the world to open the heaviest door this universe could possibly have. Once inside, the layers didn’t stand a chance against their desperate hands. They never even made it to the bedroom.

 

* * *

 

Svetlana’s due date had been calculated on November 15th, but the baby had no intention of coming out on that specific date. Even a whole week later, Svetlana’s cervix was no closer to dilating than it was the day before. The very pregnant, very big and _very_ irritated Russian woman was waddling around Mickey and Ian’s apartment while bitching in both English and Russian to everyone and everything. The idea had been for her to stay with them in a bed in the new nursery until the baby came so that one of them would always be present if she needed anything.

As it turned out, a very pregnant woman needed a lot of things. The baby turned out to be a bit of a night owl, kicking Svetlana awake in the wee hours of the morning to the point that Svetlana started taking scheduled naps during the day to keep up her beauty sleep. Mickey and Ian switched off on the pre-baby-duties, dropping off and picking up Yevgeny from school, doing grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, reading to Yevgeny and massaging Svetlana’s feet, though Mickey was apparently far superior to Ian in that aspect. As the irritation of needing to pee 18 times a day and waddling around _still_ pregnant with _Mickey’s_ child steadily increased, satisfying a lot of odd cravings was the easiest way to alleviate some of Svetlana’s foul mood swings. Random grocery store runs, corner store runs and ice cream store runs were distributed over the three men living in Svetlana’s bubble, all of which had in some way contributed to her current situation, and all of which had to pay for their penance.

By now, Mickey had heard every possible insult available to his family name, as long as Yevgeny was not around to hear them. Yevgeny knew his mom wasn’t always in the happiest of places, but Svetlana didn’t want him worrying anymore after he had once offered to cut out the baby himself so she could feel better. He had heard about a C-section from someone at school, and had figured that alleviating his mother’s discomfort was worth getting his hands dirty for. Not that Svetlana ever thought that Yevgeny would take a knife to her belly in order to help her, but she had felt guilty that her discomfort had made her son feel like he needed to resort to relatively scary tactics. So she only bitched at Mickey when Yevgeny was at school, or at soccer practice, or at a friend’s house, or asleep. Which was pretty much all the time.

In the last 4 months of the pregnancy, Mickey had gotten closer to Svetlana in a completely different way. Once the awe of viewing her as a miraculous babymaker had passed, he still regarded her with a little more respect and, though he wouldn’t admit it, a little more love. Her happiness and role within his little family had started to become more and more important to him, and the three adults would spend whole evenings reminiscing over their collectively crappy childhoods, the shitty things they did as teenagers and the broken dreams they had to give up as adults. The unspoken agreement for none of those things to happen to their two children was a given.  

The one thing they could _not_ agree on was the name of the baby. Svetlana wanted to name the baby something Russian, considering that she was Russian, Yevgeny had a Russian name and she was the one pushing a 9-pound half-Russian baby with a big Ukrainian head out of _her_ vagina. As Ian massaged her feet _(for a change)_ , he very carefully argued that they were aiming for something a little more… _pronounceable_ than the last baby she named. A string of Russian curses followed that statement, but in the end, Svetlana reluctantly agreed that she would give them a list of names she deemed worthy of carrying half her blood, sweat and tears.

On Saturday, November 24th at 3.09 am, Svetlana turned on the lights in the bedroom and poked Ian in the ribs to let him know her water broke, her contractions were near and she wanted a cup of coffee. Ian violently jumped out of bed, almost taking Mickey with him, and started running around waking up Yevgeny, putting on the coffee machine and throwing on clothes. Mickey, always the slower waker, wondered why their daughter had to pick 3 am as the perfect time to come to the light before getting up and helping Yevgeny with getting ready. Ian had had his EMT buddies Ed and Jose on call for 3 weeks in case Svetlana was ready to give birth, and the ambulance was waiting in front of the building as a hyper Ian, an amused Svetlana, a scowling Mickey, and a yawning Yevgeny holding his mother’s hospital bag, walked out of the elevator 23 minutes later. Yevgeny immediately perked up as he saw the ambulance, excited about finally getting to drive around in one like his pops. Jose hugged a broadly grinning Ian as he approached the ambulance, and then helped Svetlana gently climb into the ambulance and on the stretcher as Ian buckled Yevgeny into the passenger seat. Ian and Mickey sat in the back of the ambulance, listening to Yevgeny chattering to Jose about how his little sister was 9 days late and she was huge and his mom was going to have a C-section thing, because they draw a letter C and then cut into that.

By the time they arrived at the hospital, Svetlana had had two contractions and almost pulverized both of Mickey’s hands. Ian knew better than to let a woman in labour hold his hands, but if Mickey was trying to tough it out with her, that was alright with him. After Ian helped Jose cart Svetlana into the hospital, everything started falling into place extremely quickly. It turned out that Ian was an extremely popular EMT at the hospital, and combined with it being a slow night, people were tripping over themselves trying to take care of Svetlana. Mickey remembered to text Mandy that she was going to be an aunt real soon again, and called Fiona to wake her up as she had specifically requested in case Svetlana went into labour when they were asleep. He then flexed his hands a few times before going to find an ice machine and returning to subject himself to the painful process of the birth of their daughter.

Lena Milkovich was born on November 24th at 8.53 am. Though there were parts of the birth that Mickey would rather forget _(the afterbirth had been a shock, he had never seen that on tv!)_ , the all-around experience was something he was happy to have attended the second time around. Fiona, Lip, Debbie, Carl and Liam had arrived at the hospital at around 4.50 am, taking Yevgeny out of Mickey and Ian’s hands so they could focus on Svetlana. According to the midwife, Svetlana was a textbook perfect delivery, beautifully dilated with nice, clean contractions and a strong push. To Mickey, it meant that his hands were only crushed 9 more times and the baby was born without her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, which was something he _had_ seen on tv that had scared the living shit out of him.

During the whole process, Ian did most of the running around and informing Mandy and the Gallaghers of how things were going. Mickey had his ass solidly set next to Svetlana so she could curse at his family name in Russian, curse at his family name in English, _(‘accidentally’)_ punch him in the gut and crush his hands when nature took over. However, after what felt like hours from the moment the baby’s head could be seen to the moment the midwife told Svetlana to give her one last push for the second time, he was huffing and puffing and pushing in time with hers, shouting encouragements and cursing right along with her. Adrenaline was coursing through his veins as if he was participating in a particularly small bar fight, the pain in his hand almost going unnoticed while spurring on Svetlana like she was a thoroughbred racing horse just shy of the finish line. As the baby was finally pushed out, Svetlana let out a deep groan and threw back her head before taking the time to catch her breath. The happiness on her face could pull the stars down to earth, and when she opened her eyes, she grinned up at Mickey through her tears. Mickey grabbed her face gently and gave her a big, noisy kiss on her sweaty forehead that made her snort through her tears, before he turned to beam at Ian, who had been standing behind the midwife to witness the more anatomically interesting part of the birth. After Ian cut the umbilical cord, the nurses whisked away the crying baby to be weighed, cleaned and wrapped up in a blanket. Ian came to stand next to Mickey and grabbed his hand, which turned out to be hurting more than anticipated, but Mickey smiled through the pain and leaned in to give Ian a long, sweet kiss.

The crying baby returned, all 8.9 pounds and 20.4” of her, and was placed on Svetlana’s chest in a soft, green blanket. Her crying turned into soft hiccups as Svetlana whispered to her in Russian, and she eventually calmed down enough to open her eyes and look up at the world around her. Mickey’s breath stuttered as Lena’s soft baby blue eyes swept over his face when she gazed around her. He could faintly hear Svetlana saying something to Ian, Ian laughing in return and softly squeezing his hand, but Mickey’s entire world seemed to be solely focused on the expressions passing over Lena’s little face, not wanting to blink for fear of missing a single moment.

He couldn’t take his eyes off of her even if he had wanted to, and when a little piece of dust floating in the air made her smile for the first time, Mickey felt his heart shatter into as many pieces as there were stars in the sky to ultimately reconstruct itself into the shape of her little face. His soul sang out to that of this little creature in front of him. He couldn’t stop himself from reaching out his hand to count her tiny fingers, and she grabbed onto him, her grip strong and possessive, clutching onto his finger as she was clutching onto his heart.

His eyes misted over and he tore his gaze away from the most beautiful baby in the world to look at Ian in an attempt to reassure himself that it wasn’t all an amazing dream, that he wasn’t hallucinating the love practically bleeding out of his pores into the wide universe. When Ian’s eyes met his, he knew his imagination couldn’t possibly fabricate the euphoric expression on Ian’s tear-stained face as happiness was bursting out of Ian in waves, and his smile seemed to take over his entire being. It was impossible for Mickey to look at Ian in that moment and not be consumed by the bliss and hope and joy that Ian seemed to embody.

They couldn’t help but stupidly grin at each other, knowing exactly what and how the other felt, and as both Mickey and Ian turned back to look at their newborn daughter gripping Mickey’s finger like she owned it, nothing else in the world seemed to matter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With special thanks to my Beta, my Omega, those who (politely) kick my ass into finishing chapters and the lovely commentators.


	4. Murder, she wrote

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In that moment, no one would fault Ian as he literally tried to shield Mickey’s eyes from the sight in front of them like his husband was an 8-year-old child accidentally watching a sex scene on tv.

In the 12 steps it had taken them to walk from the front door of their apartment into the living room, their 15-year-old daughter had jumped off of her boyfriend’s lap and was frantically trying to simultaneously pull up her underwear and pull down her skirt while the boy desperately tried to shove everything back into his pants as he blushed furiously and softly swore up a storm to the sound of 4 grocery bags hitting the floor, glass breaking in at least one of them. In that moment, no one would fault Ian as he literally tried to shield Mickey’s eyes from the sight in front of them like his husband was an 8-year-old child accidentally watching a sex scene on tv. Mickey slapped down Ian’s hand from in front of his face with his hand and a sideways glare before turning his glare to the teenagers frantically trying to make themselves presentable. Ian’s second knee-jerk reaction was to check which murderous emotions flitted across Mickey’s face in that split-second he looked away. Since murder didn’t seem to be Mickey’s first response, Ian proceeded to mentally review whether there were any hidden weapons nearby that Mickey knew of in case murder turned out to be an option later on.

When Mickey appeared to be rooted to the spot for at least 3 seconds, Ian knew that the initial danger of Mickey flying off and choking the boy to death had passed. He mentally smacked himself for not having anticipated finding two horny teenagers _at least_ making out on the couch considering that Lena had specifically told him that she would be bringing over the boy for dinner that night, and Ian had tried to subtly inform Mickey of that event multiple times throughout the day. If he alone had walked in on the scene, it could have been turned into an amusing situation to be laughed about at the following Christmas, and many more to come. He would have teased Lena about catching the two teenagers in the act, would have pulled some embarrassing “I’m a cool dad” jokes and smoothed over the awkward situation in a flash. However, as Lena had carelessly forgotten that today was Mickey’s half-day off, Ian now had to deal with the scene unfolding in front of them in a way that would both appease Mickey’s fatherly sentiments and Lena’s teenage sensibilities if he didn’t want this turning into a full-fledged Milkovich war. He only hoped that Mickey had not noticed the boy frantically stuffing back into his pants what appeared to be a well-endowed penis, _(thankfully)_ wrapped in a condom.

After what felt like an eternity of watching teenagers pulling their clothes back into place, Ian saw Mickey’s shoulders move back and his back straighten up as if he was getting ready for battle. When Mickey took a deep breath, loudly cracked the knuckles on his FUCK hand and schooled his face into his most threatening ‘what the fuck is going on here’ look, Ian knew the war was about to start in earnest. Lena visibly stiffened at the sound of her father’s knuckles cracking, and the boy’s eyes shot to hers like a deer in headlights, looking for guidance on how to proceed. Instead of looking at the boy, she turned around to face her fathers with the quintessential Milkovich-fight-me-face, opting to rush into battle head-first as opposed to trying to strategically play the field. Ian sighed, wanting to throw his hands up in the air and chug some painkillers _(or a beer)_ for the headache he already felt coming. He knew exactly what happened when Mickey faced off with their genetically half-Russian-half-Milkovich rebelling teenager that had grown up as the niece of Mandy Milkovich, goddaughter of Detective Carl F. Gallagher, and in the presence of Ian “The Chin” Gallagher. He was going to need a drink _(or five)_ when this was all over.

Surprisingly, it was the boy that spoke first. From his positioning behind Lena, he could not see the threatening look she was throwing at her parents, and in not knowing how Lena had intended to proceed, he had consequently ruined her gameplan in the process. Not daring to look Mickey in the eye, the boy headed straight for Ian, holding out his hand to introduce himself the proper way.

“Sirs, sir, Anthony- my name-, ehm, hi, I’m... Anthony but everyone calls me Tony, or Anton or Tron or my little sister says Ant ‘cause she thinks it’s funny and ehm. Good evening.”

Tony’s hand was still lifted and aimed at Ian, and Ian had to stop himself from snorting out loud as he looked down at the hand he knew the boy had used to shove his dick back into his pants only moments earlier. It took the boy a few seconds to realize why Ian wasn’t shaking his hand and he hastily took it back, wiping it on his jeans before shoving it in his pocket and blushing furiously. Ian was now resorting to biting the inside of his cheek to keep the amusement from his face, knowing Mickey would bite his head off if he so much as grinned. As Ian tried to compose himself, he watched Mickey’s eyes move from the boy in front of them _(Tony, the boy had a name!)_ to their daughter, still glaring her Milkovich glare and actively performing The Chin Jr.®, back to the progressively more nervous and frightened boy. Mickey scratched his nose with his thumb, inhaled sharply and, to Ian’s distress, seemed to have made up his mind about something. A sharp knot twisted in Ian’s stomach and all of the sudden, the situation didn’t seem as funny as it did a few moments ago. Ian opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

As Mickey focused his full attention on Tony, Ian felt a dark aura fill the room, making it hard to breathe for the other three people in it. When Mickey tipped his head slightly sideways, Ian noticed his husband’s eyes glaze over and a cold, almost indifferent look melting into his features, smoothing out his laugh lines into a deadly, passive expression. Ian suddenly realized he had been wrong about Mickey not looking murderous; Mickey looked like the grim reaper himself, gazing down on his latest, helpless victim. Tony’s head snapped up and he visibly swallowed tightly, no longer able to avoid looking into Mickey’s eyes from up close. Right before Ian could open his mouth again to try and say something, _anything_ to snap his husband out of committing a felony, a deep, deadly voice made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

“Anthony… let’s take a walk,” it growled, causing a shiver to run down Ian’s spine. “Grab your coat and wait for me by the door.”

Ian almost wanted to whip around to check if there was anybody else with them in the apartment before he realized that the voice had come from Mickey, and that Mickey had addressed Tony. He hadn’t heard Mickey speak in _that_ voice since some junkie had genuinely threatened Yevgeny with a knife in their presence 8 years ago. Both Mickey’s reputation and  _t_ _hat_ voice had had the junkie running off in the opposite direction within seconds, and Ian’s knees had been weak with fear for too many reasons to count, one of them being Mickey, though he would never tell him. _That_ voice was never connected to anything good, and though Lena had never seen Mickey in action with it, the look on her face showed that she realized she had made a big mistake underestimating her father’s reaction to her silly, rebellious teenage actions.

As Lena reached forward to grab Tony’s hand and stop him from leaving, Mickey turned his head towards his daughter, blue eyes staring down blue eyes. Her bravado withered under Mickey’s cold look, her hand falling back to her side and instead of returning Mickey’s glare, she looked at Ian with naked panic in her eyes. Ian vaguely registered Tony scampering off to grab his coat and fidget in front of the door as he hesitated between hugging his daughter and physically stopping his husband. As if Mickey could read his thoughts, he took a step backward and away from Ian, staying just outside of his reach.

“Мы позаботимся об этом,” Mickey said to Lena, giving her a serious look he generally reserved for stern lectures and other parental punishment delivery methods. Lena’s back stiffened, her eyes wide and her hands balled into fists by her side as she stared at her dad and then quickly glanced at Tony before looking away again. Mickey turned toward Ian to give him a long, meaningful look, and Ian couldn’t tell whether that was a good or a bad sign. Mickey and Tony walked out the door before either Ian or Lena said a single word, the sound of the door slamming shut making Ian jump. His thoughts were whirling, trying to decipher Mickey’s words and the look he had been given. _We will take care of this,_ Mickey had said. _We_ will take care of this. What does that even mean?!

_Unless… no, not the Russians. Anyone but the Russians…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With special thanks to my Beta, my Omega, those who (politely) kick my ass into finishing chapters, the lovely commentators and all 15 of them guests.  
> [](http://imgur.com/qh8nVXT)


	5. How to lose a guy in 12 steps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But her dad hadn’t tried to be funny just now. There had been no hidden smile in his voice as he spoke to them, no twinkle in his eyes as he had glared her down when she had tried to stop Tony from leaving, and his mouth hadn’t formed into a half-grin as he had looked at her pops before walking out the front door.

Lena Milkovich-Gallagher was in deep shit. Lena Milkovich-Gallagher should have fucking known better, but for some reason, Lena Milkovich-Gallagher was a dumbass and had been thinking with her proverbial dick instead of her head, and now… Lena Milkovich-Gallagher was in deep, deep, _deep_ shit. Lena Milkovich-Gallagher was in _such._ deep. fucking. shit.

When the door slammed shut, Lena held her breath as she felt like her heart had stopped. _We will take care of this_ , her dad had said. ‘This’ being her soon-to-be-deceased, penectomized, or otherwise mutilated maybe-boy-she-was-in-a-couple-with _(or not?)_. The ‘we’ she hadn’t yet figured out, as she was pretty sure her dad didn’t need _anyone_ to do ...well, _anything_ , but it probably didn’t bode well for Tony’s future regardless. Despite it all, it wasn’t so much _what_ he had said as Mickey’s usage of the Russian language that really made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

It wasn’t because Mickey didn’t speak Russian well-- he did, and since starting to learn the language 15 years ago, he was now extremely proficient in Russian swearing as well as stern Russian lectures, and otherwise comfortably skilled in day-to-day and construction-related Russian. He was also great at cracking up Svetlana with his literally translated idioms, which Yevgeny had long since stopped trying to correct. Though Ian’s Russian was more fluent than Mickey’s, Mickey’s dry ‘Milkovich’ humour translated perfectly into the language in a way that Ian’s warm personality didn’t. It made for funny Russian-spoken family-dinners.

But her dad hadn’t tried to be funny just now. There had been no hidden smile in his voice as he spoke to them, no twinkle in his eyes as he had glared her down when she had tried to stop Tony from leaving, and his mouth hadn’t formed into a half-grin as he had looked at her pops before walking out the front door. Lena was still staring intently at the door as her pops moved, the sudden movement shocking her into taking a sharp breath, her heart pounding as if she’d run a mile in a minute. Ian rubbed his eyes before bringing his hands to his hair and tilting his head backwards, breathing out in an unhappy sigh while glaring at the ceiling. He looked tired, confused and a bit anxious - emotions Lena was very familiar with, and emotions that were not comforting at all in this particular situation.

She knew she had been tiring out her parents for a while now, pushing and pushing them as she tried to elbow her way to more privileges and less chores, more freedom to try to figure herself out instead of the constant stupid rules and regulations she had to play by. Their seemingly constant comparison of her to her _perfect_ fucking brother when discussing said rules had also been pissing her off for weeks, never being allowed something that Yev had apparently not felt necessary to do, like go to midnight raves at unknown locations at age 15 with her new friends. The comparisons, and corresponding parental disappointment at the lack of similarities between the siblings, grated at her nerves even though she loved Yevgeny with all of her heart and soul and she knew, deep down, that he was indeed a lot better than her at pretty much everything, and she was the black sheep of the family. She also had a sneaking suspicion that her pops had found her pack of cigarettes a few weeks ago and thrown it away, though Ian hadn’t said anything to her about it and _definitely_ hadn’t told her dad, or she would have gotten an earful from _him_ about that.

Either way, it seemed that push may have come to shove after all in a way that Lena could have, and _should_ have, predicted by her dad flying off the handle and, most likely, her maybe-boyfriend being exiled from her house if he was still among the living by the end of the night.

As her eyes followed Ian around the living room as he paced, her right hand started to shake involuntarily. Ian seemed genuinely concerned and kept glancing at the front door as if he wanted to follow Mickey but then changed his mind and went back to running a hand through his hair while looking around the room for clues. Lena’s breathing picked up and she felt the beginnings of a panic attack creep up her spine as Ian kept pacing, glancing, pacing. She had really meant for tonight to be a good night, to not argue _(or start an argument)_ about everything from school and grades and allowance to parties and her clothing and makeup. She had been subtly dropping hints to her pops that she’d be bringing home someone special in the hopes that Ian could casually slip that information into a conversation or a text or one of their ‘meaningful glances’ to Mickey, and Mickey could slowly come to terms with his daughter dating someone and hopefully not kill him when that someone showed up. When they hadn’t gotten home at their usual time, she assumed that maybe her pops had taken her dad to a bar to pre-drink, calm him down, prepare him for what was to come, who knows. She should have texted Ian. She should have called and asked where they were. She should have confirmed their whereabouts like they usually do hers. She should have remembered her brother’s favorite saying, _‘assumptions are the mother of all fuck-ups’_. Because fuck-up she did.

Her heart was racing a hundred miles an hour, her head was starting to feel heavy and high at the same time, and an overwhelming rush of emotions washed over her. She hadn’t intended for them to walk in on her and Tony, honestly. She hadn’t intended for _that,_ with Tony, right there, to even happen at all! But with the nerves and the excitement and the adrenaline, it just... _did_. And now it probably would never happen again. She had screwed up and her dad was _really_ mad and pops was worried and it was her fault and--

The soft snapping of fingers in front of her face, the hand on her shoulder and Ian’s soft voice slowly brought her focus out of her own head and back into the present.

“-na, it’s alright, don’t worry about Tony, nothing’s going to happen, they’ll be fine, okay?”

The fog slowly lifted from her eyes and she felt herself nod and mimic Ian’s exaggerated intake of breath until she had taken a few deep breaths and could count backwards in Russian in her head, going through the motions to calm down so her pops wouldn’t freak out too much.

“It’ll all be okay, dad will probably just walk him around the block and ehm… give him a stern talking to or something, it’s no big deal, alright?”

Lena kept nodding, couldn’t stop nodding, finally looking up to check if her pops’ tone of voice matched the expression in his eyes, to see if he believed his own words, falling from his dishonest lips. She gave him a weak smile just as he returned it with a weak smile of his own.

_Well, worst comes to worst... at least we’ll be able to afford bail._


	6. Hindsight is 20/20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not that Tony would try to run away. He could probably outrun Lena’s dad, but he was sure the man had ties to the Russian Mafia, and could probably track him down by his first name alone. Also, his aunt worked for him. He definitely remembered her saying something about white and black Russians and Russians on the dance floor, which was probably a euphemism for something Mafia related. Damnit, he was so screwed.

On a good day, Anthony Seymour _(Tony, Anton, Tons, The Tonsilator, Antie)_ was a happy, easy-going 16-year-old kid that occasionally got in trouble for the things kids growing up in between the North- and Southside sometimes do. Nothing big, nothing harmful, nothing permanent-- just… stupid fun. Before that afternoon, he had had short term plans _(have lots of sex with Lena)_ , medium term plans _(pass his written test so he could get his driver’s license)_ and long term plans _(attend college or something like that)_. Life was pretty good and promised to get better.

Today, however, was not a good day. It had initially started out as a good day, was even inching towards being an amazing day, before it all spectacularly came crashing down like a Baby Grand being pushed out of a window just to fall on top of a tiny dog. He was that tiny dog.

As he walked side-by-side with Lena’s dad _(his last name is Milkovich, of course, but what is his first name again? How could you not remember that tiny essential piece of information? My aunt works for the guy, c’mon!)_ , he realized just how much he would be missing out on if he died tonight. He definitely hadn’t ticked off enough boxes on his bucket list to feel okay with the end being so near. If his life were to flash before his eyes, he was sure it’d feel like premature ejaculation considering how little he had done with his life so far. If he got out of this alive, which he doubted, he would be better, and do good, and volunteer at a animal shelter or something to rake up some brownie points and karma and that shit.

Lena’s dad _(Milkoviiiiiiiiich, something-something-Milkovich, jesus christ what’s his name? Adam?)_ hadn’t said a word to him since he told Tony to get his coat and wait for him by the door. Tony had hoped that he would be told to get out so he could at least get a head’s start running or something, because then maybe he would have had a chance at surviving this debacle. But no, he had been told to wait by the door, and wait he did, trying to catch Lena’s eyes so she could tell him what to do, how to deal with her dad, ask her to plead for his life or something. Her dad _(Bob? Charlie? Don? Ed? Fred?)_ had then said something vaguely threatening to Lena in what he assumed was Russian. Considering that he didn’t speak Russian, other than the 3 swearwords Lena had taught him, he had only been able to interpret the dad’s words by Lena’s reaction, which did not bode well-- _at all!_ Lena’s eyes had practically popped out of her head, and she had only looked at him briefly before looking away quickly, divulging no useful or otherwise calming information whatsoever. Lena’s other dad’s face had gone a little white, and then a little confused. Neither person’s reaction had done anything to calm Tony’s nerves, and he was trying not to fidget or bounce or cough as he kept pace with Lena’s dad _(George? Harry? Ian? James?)_ as they walked down the yellow brick road.

They were walking at a steady pace in a part of town Tony was not familiar with. Lena’s dad _(K… whose name starts with a K? Oh, Kevin. No. Luke?)_ had taken out his phone the moment they hit the street, sent off a few texts and put his phone away. He had then taken out a very familiar, half-empty pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, lit one up and proceeded to smoke as he walked, never turning around, never checking where he was going, never once glancing at Tony to make sure he was still with him.

Not that Tony would try to run away. He could probably outrun Lena’s dad _(Michael Corleone! Yeah no. Noel? Odin? Would definitely smite me. Perry- of course not, how could this guy be called Perry, for fuck’s sake)_ , but he was sure the man had ties to the Russian Mafia, and could probably track him down by his first name alone. Also, his aunt worked for him. He definitely remembered her saying something about white and black Russians and Russians on the dance floor, which was probably a euphemism for something Mafia related. Damnit, he was so screwed. Lena was awesome and smart and funny and _amazing_ but he had _so_ screwed up the all-important first parental meeting. How could he be so stupid, trying to bang the daughter of a Russian Mafia boss while her dads were on their way to the house, and then get _caught_? Was he an amateur? _(Technically, yes.)_ Where was his head? _(Still covered in a dirty condom.)_

What felt like an eternity later, Lena’s dad _(there are never any good Q-names, other than Q himself. Russell? Steve? Tony? No, you stupid-- Uriel? Vincent! No.)_ slowed down his pace, facing a fork in the road and standing still for a moment as he finished his cigarette. They had reached a downtown area, and Tony could see a small, poorly lit park on the right side of the right fork _(could easily bury a body there)._ To his distress, Lena’s dad _(Walter? Jesus, that’s the worst. Xavier? Who even has a Y-name. Zeus? Will also smite me.)_ checked his watch, grabbed another cigarette and started walking towards the creepy park as he lit it up. He was definitely going to get murdered. He vaguely wondered if the thought of his body out there, in a box, would make Lena’s dad smile eventually.

Lena’s dad _(for crying out loud, should just call my aunt to get this over with. Maybe also call my mom's lawyer at the law office of eh… law offices)_ jaywalked straight to the opening of the park, didn’t even glance at the two homeless people lying on boxes near the entrance and walked until he found a bench that apparently appeased him enough to sit down on. Tony hesitated, not knowing whether he was supposed to just stand there, or wait for Lena’s dad’s _(my aunt would want to know why I’d want to know what her boss’ name is, though. Can’t really go telling her I’m dating her Mafia boss’ daughter...)_ to tell him to sit or-

“Sit,” Lena’s dad _(Andrew? Bill? Clinton- what, no. Dick? Ehehehe...)_ said, still not even looking in his general direction. Well, at least that solved _that_ dilemma.

Tony sat on the edge of the bench as far away from the other man as possible, crossing and uncrossing his feet, shifting his balance until he was in the best position to get up and run if he had to. He couldn’t see any visible weapons on Lena’s dad, but he was sure there was probably a butterfly knife and some brass knuckles hidden in those jacket pockets. Maybe an ankle holster. He snuck a peek at the other man’s feet, but couldn’t make out if there was an outline of a holster on his ankles due to the big construction boots and heavy pants he was wearing. Well, he’d just have to run zigzag and jump into a bush or something. Then probably call his aunt and lawyer and ask for a parley, or whatever you call that in Russian.

As they sat there in silence, Lena’s dad _(Echo. Fuck. Goddamnit.)_ calmly smoking his second cigarette and Tony trying to subtly reach into his pocket to find his phone, a loud notification came through on Lena’s dad’s phone. Tony jumped, almost falling off the bench, and blushed furiously as he scrambled back into a better sitting position. Lena’s dad _(Homicidal. Idiot. Jesus.)_ didn’t react in the slightest to what was happening beside him, just checked the incoming message and grunted to himself. He finished his cigarette, expertly flicked it away with two fingers _(so jealous)_ and got up. As he started walking away, Tony waited a few seconds to be told to come with or stay put _(so his sniper could finish him off, probably)_ before deciding that maybe it was better to just… go along with whatever was happening. Ride it out. Go with the flow. Do or die. Feed the fishies. Oh god.

He jogged a few steps to catch up to Lena’s dad _(Klondike. Legolas. Mickey Mouse. Nova Scotia.)_ , shoving his hands in his coat pockets to feel around for his phone just to realize that it had _probably_ been in his pant pocket this afternoon and it had _probably_ fallen out when he and Lena had started fooling around on the couch, because it was _definitely_ not there right now. Short of trying to steal Lena’s dad’s phone _(Olives. Police. Wait, isn’t Lena’s uncle a detective? Oh god, they’re never going to find my body.)_ , he had no way of contacting anyone. He couldn’t even turn on his GPS so he could leave a digital bread crumb trail for someone to find later. He was so not ready to join a criminal organization with this poor foresight and lack of preparation.

Having been completely lost in thought, Tony hadn’t realized that they had reached the downtown area, and that Lena’s dad _(Q again. There’s never a Q. Ridiculous.)_ was holding open the door to a dark, musty bar. Tony abruptly stopped and couldn’t help himself from staring from Lena’s dad _(Scary. Tatt- are those… does that say FUCK? Ahh, COME on...)_ to the door and back again.

For once, Lena’s dad was actually looking at him. His blue eyes and arched eyebrows were a carbon copy of his daughter’s _(or hers of his)_ , but Tony couldn’t read his expression like he could Lena’s. Lena’s dad _(Eulogy. Wait, that starts with an E… Still gonna need one though.)_ tilted his head slightly sideways, a ‘were-you-dropped-on-your-head-as-a-child’ look _(so that’s where Lena gets it from)_ present on his face, and Tony sprang into action, knowing that if this father was anything like his daughter, he’d start getting compared to several inanimate objects soon if he didn’t move.

After taking a few steps inside, Tony stood still to give his eyes time to adjust to the dim lighting in the room _(in order to be able to find the exits later)_. A long, dark wooden bar stretched all along the right side of the room, with a group of rough-looking men sitting in the bar chairs taking up most of the space in front of it. Hanging light fixtures illuminated a couple of pool tables in the back, a few dark half-moon shaped booths occupied the space on the left _(everything is dark in here)_ , and tables and chairs were spread out over the remaining area in between the bar and booths. Low, growling music was playing over the sound system in a language he couldn’t quite pinpoint. So, basically, your run-of-the-mill bar.

Lena’s dad _(Very Well. The exit is behind you.)_ walked over to the older, ash-blonde bartender standing behind the bar and shook her hand. She said something Tony couldn’t hear, leaned forward over the bar and kissed Lena’s dad _(this is ridiculous, Imma just call him Mr. Milkovich and get it over with)_ on both cheeks. Tony couldn’t see the expression on Mr. Milkovich’s face, but the bartender looked serious and after saying what she had to say, went back to polishing a glass.

An older, tall, grim looking fella’ sitting immediately to Mr. Milkovich’s left side stood up from his bar chair, grabbed Lena’s dad by the side of his arms-- and also kissed him on both cheeks. Tony saw Mr. Milkovich’s expression soften slightly, and return the greeting with a smile. Looking at the scene in front of him, Tony was desperately trying to remember if Lena or her family were Italian in any way _(her other dad had European roots of some kind)_ , because he felt like he had walked straight into The Godfather, until the older man started talking to Mr. Milkovich _(Lena’s da-- this is exhausting)_ in a language that sounded vaguely familiar. It wasn’t until Lena’s dad replied to the man that the cadence of his voice reminded him of Lena talking to her mother on the phone-- in Russian. They were speaking Russian. They were Russian. This was the Russian Mafia. He was in a Russian Mafia bar. He was going to die at the hands of half a dozen mean-looking Russians.

His eyes wide with shock, he glanced to a _(rough-looking-- wait, was everyone rough-looking in this bar?!)_ couple sitting in the first booth to the left, talking to each other loud enough for him to make out that they were definitely _not_ speaking English. The group of men sitting at the tables in the middle of the room were playing a strange-looking card game-- and speaking what sounded like Russian. The bartender was now casually conversing with one of the big, burly men sitting in front of her-- in Russian. As it slowly dawned on him that no one around him was speaking English, he also realized that _everyone_ around him, men and women alike, was bigger, rougher and more bad-ass looking than any a crowd he had seen before. Though not everyone was paying attention to the young boy _(still)_ standing by the door, the ones that did had given him only so much as a glance or a  once-over, finding him undeserving of their further attention, and had continued whatever it was they were doing in the first place-- which was probably Russian Mafia business-related. No one had yet to address him, though he was sure that everyone was aware of his presence.

He looked at Mr. Milkovich again, trying to gauge his mood and hopefully his frame of mind as they were now in public _(or at least with a number of potential witnesses)_ , but his face seemed to have lost all traces of soft- and kindness; rather, he looked like a businessman, doing the rounds of all the people in the bar, alternating between shaking hands, man-hugging and clapping shoulders, and kissing both cheeks, regardless of gender. A few people addressed him with ‘privjet’ and words he couldn’t understand, and Tony kept hoping that someone would address Mr. Milkovich by his first name so he could put that issue to rest. The fact that _no one_ had yet to address Mr. Milkovich by his first name was a whole different issue and his palms started to get sweaty when he caught on to the fact that he may have fucked _(yeahyeah)_ with the wrong Russian Mafia boss’ daughter.

Tony looked up just as Mr. Milkovich was done greeting the couple on the first booth to his left, and started walking towards him.

“Join me,” he said as he turned on his heel to stalk to the last booth in the far left corner of the bar. Tony thought he heard someone snort or cough to his right, but his mind couldn’t process the sound as it went blank with terror. He followed Mr. Milkovich to the darkest, most threatening-looking booth he had ever seen-- if booths could look threatening. He hadn’t even gotten fully settled into his side of the booth yet _(your back to the door, not a good exit strategy)_ when, seemingly out of nowhere, the bartender appeared with three _(three?)_ shot glasses, two regular glasses filled with a milky-white substance and a full bottle of vodka.

Mr. Milkovich thanked _(probably?)_ the woman in Russian and casually pushed one of the glasses with milky-looking liquid towards Tony while looking him straight in the eyes. He grabbed his own glass and took a sip, never taking his eyes off of the boy in front of him. Tony, in his turn, grabbed the glass and, figuring this may be his last drink, took a big swig which, as luck would have it, went straight down the wrong pipe. The alcohol-and-coffee tasting milk burned down his trachea and he immediately tried coughing up as much as possible before it hit his lungs, yet without spitting it back up into Mr. Milkovich’s face. He slammed the glass back down and his face turned beet-red as he coughed and sputtered and only belatedly realized that someone was gently clapping him on the back. In his shock, he almost smacked Mr. Milkovich straight in the face, but the older man thankfully managed to move just out of the way of a flailing arm. Tony pulled his arms back in, still coughing softly, eternally horrified that he had almost punched his girlfriend’s father in the face _(wait, girlfriend, are we- well, yeah, of course we are)_.

Mr. Milkovich didn’t seem worse for the wear; in fact, it actually looked like he was-- amused, or at least less angry-looking, even though his expression was hard to judge in the darkness of the booth, and the bar, and the general mood. Moving back to the other side of the booth, Mr. Milkovich grabbed the bottle of vodka and poured out three shot glasses. Tony was just about to open his mouth to ask who the third shot was for when the door of the bar smacked open with a loud bang, and everyone in the place went quiet. It even seemed like the music had stopped as people held their collective breaths. It was Mr. Milkovich’s carefully passive expression combined with a slowly rising eyebrow that made Tony curious enough to take his eyes off of the man in front of him to see what was happening behind him.

In the doorway stood a beautiful, tall woman dressed in a short, low-cut red dress, silver high heels and a white, fur coat. Her long, brown hair swayed gently in the breeze outside, and her figure was outlined against the streetlight. Her gaze swept over the bar, seeing everyone but not acknowledging anyone in particular, before she sauntered in like she owned the place. She slid off her coat as she slowly and purposefully strolled past the men sitting at the bar to the back of the room, winking at the bartender as she went by. The men dropped their gaze as she passed by, and muttered a soft greeting _(in Russian)_ to the floor, which she took as her due. Casually dropping her coat on one of the pool tables, she changed direction-- and walked straight towards Tony and Mr. Milkovich.

Tony’s eyes went wide _(the deer in the headlights look was really becoming a trademark at this point)_ , wanting to look elsewhere but unable to take his eyes off the woman in red. As she reached their booth, she put her hands on the table and leaned forward slightly, looking Tony straight in the eye, tilting her head slightly. The movement sparked recognition in him, but he couldn’t place where he had seen it before as she reached over, took a shot glass and knocked it back like it was water. Tony tried to swallow along with her, but his throat felt dry despite having choked on that milky substance just moments earlier. His brain was working overtime, trying to provide a reasonable and convincing explanation for what was going on. Finally, the woman slammed down her shot glass, startling Tony in the process, and turned towards Mr. Milkovich _(oh right, he was still there)_.

Mr. Milkovich gracefully slid out of the booth, carefully grabbed the woman by the side of her arms and kissed her softly on both cheeks. They exchanged a few kind words _(in Russian)_ before he stepped back to let her slide into the booth before him. Tony’s brain, still not having caught up with the tableau in front of him, was desperately looking for clues in either Mr. Milkovich or the woman’s expressions as to their relationship or general place in the world. Unfortunately, both adults must have been excellent poker players in their youths, because Tony couldn’t even figure out what they were to one another. They were definitely not siblings, but they could be business partners, or the King and Queen of the Russian Mafia or--. Belatedly, he realized he was now sitting across from two _(Russian)_ adults who were intently staring at him without him having a clue as to what was going on.

“So,” the woman said, finally ripping through the stifling silence at the booth as she spoke in a deep Russian accent, “tell me something about yourself, Anthony Christopher Seymour.”

She grabbed a second shot of vodka and elegantly knocked it back. Tony would have been impressed at her complete lack of reaction to the alcohol if the question hadn’t baffled him first, and the usage of his full name hadn’t terrified him straight after. He looked to Mr. Milkovich for… for what, answers? Help? Guidance? All he received for his troubles was a raised eyebrow and a “get on with it” look. Tony cleared his throat, trying to make sure his first words to Mr. Milkovich and the Mystery Woman weren’t spoken at a higher pitch than usual. Deciding to just go with the flow, he opened with the first thing he could think of.

“I’m eh… 16,” he blurted out, figuring they may be less inclined to murder an underaged child in cold blood, “I’m a Junior, and ehm… I really like hockey. Go Blackhawks?”

Both adults were looking at him with an unimpressed expression on their face and a single raised eyebrow, as if they had planned the whole thing out just for effect. He opened his mouth and closed it again, not knowing what else he could say that would change the Russian Mafia’s mind about taking him out back to become rat food. He briefly wondered if mentioning that he was _(maybe, sort-of, a little)_ Lena’s boyfriend would cause either of them to choke him on the spot, or take pity on the young and foolish.

Mr. Milkovich and the woman turned to one another, and a very fast, very tense conversation _(in Russian)_ took place in the span of 30 seconds. Eyebrows were raised left and right between the two of them, the woman suddenly barked out a laugh before diving back in with a serious face. Then Mr. Milkovich shook his head once, and the conversation was over.

The woman pressed her lips together and raised one eyebrow in amusement at him before turning back to Tony, suppressing a soft smile before smoothing out her face into a passive mask of nothingness, but it was that one moment that set off a thousand sparklers in Tony’s head. In his mind’s eye, he could see Lena producing that exact same expression time and time again whenever she thought something was funny, but too silly to laugh at. He was a master at getting Lena to the exact level of exasperation necessary for her to make that face, and this woman had just reproduced the same face with unsettling accuracy. His whole body went rigid, his mind finally realizing that he was looking at Lena’s mother, Svetlana _(at least I know *her* first name)_ , in the flesh. Lena had once teasingly told him that one half-Russian woman was already too much for him to handle, and that he should avoid any full-blooded Russian women if he could help it. He knew back then that she had meant her mother. He had not known how right she was.

Svetlana scrunched her eyes as she recognized Tony’s mental shift, and then beamed a thousand-watts smile at him when his eyes reflected the fear he felt inside.

“You know who I am now, yes?” she confirmed more than asked, her smile turning ever so slightly predatory. Tony nodded against his will, trying to appear calm and composed but not being able to hold back his body from responding to Svetlana’s rhetorical question.

“Well, that just make me smile too,” Svetlana mumbled under her breath before her smile transformed into a smirk, and she flicked her hair to one side, filling the two empty shot glasses with vodka and sliding one towards Mr. Milkovich. It occurred to Tony that Lena had the exact same smirk whenever she knew she was about to get exactly what she wanted. The resemblance between mother and daughter had never been more apparent, and more frightening. It was like he had been dealing with the cute 15-year-old lion cub all this time, not knowing what would happen when he ran into her full-fledged lioness mother. If the Russian Mafia didn’t kill him, this woman probably would, with one hand behind her back. Unless, of course, she _was_ the Russian Mafia.

Svetlana and Mr. Milkovich _(for crying out LOUD, what is his first name!)_ knocked back the shot at the same time. A faint smile was pulling at Mr. Milkovich mouth as he appeared to be amused at Svetlana’s previous statements and leaned back in the booth, crossing his arms in front of his chest. Tony was razor focused on Mr. Milkovich’ face as the older man’s face melted into a neutral mask again, his eyes drifting to the other people in the bar, probably scoping out the competition or someone he had business with once he was done with this pesky task. From the corner of his eye, he could see Svetlana watching him watch Mr. Milkovich, and as her smile grew bigger, his heart started racing. He felt like she knew something, like she was waiting for something to happen, and that this something was most likely not going to beneficial to his health. The borderline bored expression on Mr. Milkovich’ face made Tony desperate to say something, anything, to bring his attention back to what was happening in their booth, to bring his gaze back to _him_ so Mr. Milkovich wouldn’t scratch this young boy off his To Do list so easily and leave him for the Russian lioness to finish off. But before his brain could come up with something tactful _(that’s a lot of witne- eh, patrons on a weekday)_ , mature _(I understand your concern for your daughter’s well-being)_ or otherwise interesting to say _(did you know that the fur of a polar bear is mostly transparent, not white)_ , he instead blurted out, “I’M IN LOVE WITH LENA AND I DON’T CARE IF YOU’RE KING OF THE RUSSIAN MAFIA BUT YOU CAN’T KILL ME FOR THAT!”

The entire bar suddenly went eerily quiet as if the vinyl with soothing bar-like undertones was abruptly ripped off the record player. Tony was breathing like he’d run a marathon and then some; his heart pumping in his throat, sweat dripping down his spine and his fists clenching and unclenching underneath the table. He was sure he felt the eyes of every single man, woman and bartender on the back of his neck, though he didn’t turn around to verify. He could even vaguely make out the general shape of Svetlana softly shaking in what could be either sobs or silent laughter, but that too was not important. The only eyes his eyes had eyes for were Mr. Milkovich’s, and the micro-emotions flitting across his face.

Tony tried to compare what he was looking at with his knowledge of Lena’s _(stunning)_ facial expressions. There was an internal struggle happening within Lena’s dad, though between what and what, Tony couldn’t tell. Most importantly, Mr. Milkovich seemed quietly baffled at Tony’s _(very loud)_ outburst, his eyebrows raised high in silent judgment and his piercing blue eyes wider than Tony had ever seen them. As the instruments of judgment slowly lowered themselves, something in Mr. Milkovich seemed to settle, to relax, and as a consequence, Tony felt like everyone around him _(or maybe it was just me)_ took a deep breath. He unclenched his fists and took another cleansing gulp of air, feeling like maybe he would survive the night after all, albeit through unusual methods.

Tony almost wanted to smile up at Mr. Milkovich when a new thought seemed to violently strike Lena’s dad, as if he remembered something he shouldn’t have forgotten in the first place. A dark mask fell over his features, and in an instant, Tony was once again looking at Mr. “King of the Mafia” Milkovich instead of the almost-pleasant man he had caught a glimpse of. Tony looked at Svetlana for help, but as if on cue, she took out her phone _(from where?!)_ , called someone on speed-dial and said all of six _(Russian)_ words before hanging up again. She turned to look at Mr. Milkovich with a smile as he shot her a questioning look but shook her head to say that right now was not the right time to talk about whatever it is she had just done. Mr. Milkovich raised a single eyebrow before rolling his eyes and turning his gaze towards the bar. When his eyes settled on the person he seemed to be looking for, he asked in a loud voice, “Time?”

“21 point 27,” was the loud response coming from the bar area, before a female voice yelled “BINGO!” and the entire building collectively responded with a festive cheer, as if their football team had scored on a particularly nice run.

Tony whipped his head around to figure out why the people were cheering, and proceeded to witness the most bizarre scenario unfold in front of him. The dark, threatening aura of the bar had abruptly transformed into a light-hearted, jovial scene as people high fived, compared what appeared to be notes and were smacking each other on the back amicably. It was as if someone had flipped a light switch _(which they probably did)_ , and the dark mafia vibe, the tough-guy attitudes and Russian coldness had disappeared like a roast beef in front of a pitbull. The bartender offered the whole bar a round of drinks _(in ENGLISH!)_ and another cheer shook the building.

Tony’s jaw dropped dramatically, his eyes back into deer-in-headlights mode and his face the epitome of dumbfounded, comical confusion. He couldn’t help but stare as the old, tall, grim looking fella’ pulled a thick wad of money from the inside of his jacket and handed it to a woman sitting at the bar with a terribly smug grin on her face. The woman gracefully accepted the money, and then looked straight at Tony and winked. Tony audibly gasped and abruptly turned back to the booth in shock to look away from the winking woman. He grabbed the remaining shot of vodka before either of the adults could stop him and knocked it back, grimacing as he prepared for the burn to hit, hoping it would burn away some of the confusion his brain was dealing with. When neither burn nor the taste of vodka hit the back of his throat, he looked up in shock-- straight into Mr. Milkovich’s mischievous blue eyes and shit-eating grin. Laugh lines and white teeth had appeared out of nowhere on the face of the man that had previously _(allegedly)_ wanted to kill him. Tony turned to look at Svetlana, who was leaned back into the booth, softly chuckling in her seat as she observed both her booth-companions as well as the rest of the bar.

Before he could voice his bewilderment _(in what would probably be another embarrassing moment),_ the front door of the bar slammed open violently, and everyone in the bar hushed. Tony whipped around once more _(definitely whiplash prone at this point)_ to see a fuming father-and-daughter combo standing in the doorway, lit from behind by the streetlamp that made them look like avenging angels with Lena’s hair whipping in the wind. Ian took two big, threatening steps into the bar, leaving his daughter behind to deal with the rebounding door smacking her in the arm _(“Jesus fuck, pa!”)_. It took him all of 0.8 seconds to zero in on Tony’s and Mr. Milkovich’s location between the _(now relatively quiet)_ bar patrons before he stalked off in their direction, death-glaring at Mr. Milkovich as he went. As Ian stood in front of the booth, he shot another threatening glare at Svetlana, who only giggled softly, before he addressed his lawfully wedded husband.

“Mikhailo Aleksandr Milkovich, you are in _deep fucking shit_!”

“BINGO!”, yelled the same female voice somewhere behind Ian, and the bar erupted in cheers once more.

_Well, at least I have a first name now._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With special thanks to my Beta, my Omega, those who (politely) kick my ass into finishing chapters, the lovely commentators, all 15 of them guests and those able to catch some (or all) of the references hidden inside.


	7. All hands on deck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mickey put down his glass, walked up to the guy, casually pulled him out of his bar chair and decked him right then and there.

Ian’s fuming face made it hard for Mickey to not snort and escalate the situation _(even further)_ , but he managed somehow _._ Keeping the amusement out of his eyes was unfortunately impossible, especially with the cheerful sounds coming from the bar and Svetlana chuckling next to him. He knew Ian would get over this, as Ian got over everything eventually, but he would probably have to deal with The Chin® for a certain period of time either way. Dealing with the upcoming Chin Jr.® that Lena was already displaying was far easier, but required a delicate touch that Mickey had long since perfected while simultaneously guilt tripping his daughter just _barely_ as well as encouraging the positive sides of her behaviour, if any. Mickey smacked Svetlana’s thigh with his right hand to shut her up just as Lena caught up with her dad, and both Mickey and Svetlana schooled their expressions into careful neutrality, as was part of the plan.

The plan had not started as a plan. There hadn’t been a plan for the longest time until, at some point, the plan had to come into existence because the bets had already been made and too many people were either voluntarily involved or emotionally invested in it. All Mickey had tried to achieve with the plan was to perform damage control and to keep the execution of the plan fair, fraud-free and under moderate wraps, for everyone’s sake.

At the core of the issue, the plan only came into existence because Lena had tried to keep Tony and their budding relationship a secret from her dads. If there was anyone to blame for this whole situation, it was Lena herself. And maybe the gossipy construction people that were too involved in one another’s lives. And possibly Mickey’s lack of interest in the most recent gossip, which involved the nephew of his secretary and one beautiful raven-haired girl. But mostly Lena.

It had taken Mickey a few days to figure out that _something_ was going on, but because it wasn’t interfering with the construction work in his project, he hadn’t bothered trying to figure out what kept his crew grinning so broadly that particular week. There was always _something_ going on, and if he had wasted his time trying to figure out every new tidbit coming in, he’d never have been appointed as Project Director of one of the biggest construction sites in the city. That, and his ability to understand and deal with the Russian chain of command he had to work with.

Mickey had been recruited by the Russian corporation after working in the industry for 4 years, climbing _(and sometimes lawyering)_ his way up to project supervisor in a slightly rickety organization. Mickey’s ability to work with difficult construction crew had somehow been brought to the attention of the management team of a new and upcoming Russian construction company. That he had a Russian ex-wife, spoke spotty Russian and knew how to deal with, let’s say, _irregularities_ in his own special way, had been considered a definite plus. Furthermore, Mickey had no loyalties to any particular criminal organization, Russian or otherwise. The Russians had felt that investing in their company’s management team was worth the price Mickey had put on his departure from his previous job. After trying out the position for 3 months and being offered a permanent contract, Mickey and Ian put their small apartment on the market and uprooted the whole family to live closer to the company’s headquarters near the Northside.

Because the construction company had been founded and managed by Russians from the very beginning, it attracted and employed a lot of culturally similar employees to create a more cohesive workforce. From day one, Mickey had been working with people from Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and other Russian speaking countries and regions. His understanding of the Russian language and culture through Svetlana’s training and exposure was highly appreciated by upper management, and his appreciation for dry humour and strong liquor had made him a favorite amongst the construction workers. Despite the ever-present ups and downs, a few fights here, some too-harsh words there, and a site that _almost_ went under, Mickey’s hard work was recognized as such. With time, his managerial skills were raised to a (more) acceptable level, and he was requested to supervise bigger and more expensive sites. Then, 7 years later, Ian insisted he apply for a new Project Director position; a request Mickey humored though he found himself far underqualified for the job. It was no surprise to anyone _but_ Mickey that he was called for a first interview, then a second, and was offered the job pending his successful completion of certain additional management training courses.

Still, for all of his understanding of his crew and insight into their habits, it took him more than a week to accidentally learn that the new, _still_ ongoing gossip among his crew included his daughter.

That Friday night, as Mickey and a big group of his crew and other members of the company were having their Friday Happy Hour drinks at their usual bar, it appeared that one too many beers had gone down one particular new crewman’s throat. A small group of men were sitting at the bar, talking loudly when Mickey heard the name _‘Lena’_ spoken just a tad too loudly and a tad too excitedly in combination with the word _‘bet’_. Though Mickey usually had a pretty good grip on his Southside temper, and he vaguely noted that there was a possibility that there was more than one Lena in the city, it was the combination of the words, tone of voice and nasty laughter following that triggered a primal urge to defend what was his. Mickey put down his glass, walked up to the guy, casually pulled him out of his bar chair and decked him right then and there.

The bar immediately went uncomfortably quiet, with too many worried gazes pointed in Mickey’s direction as he wiped his fist on his pants, still glaring down at the man on the floor, which he now recognized as Vadim. Even though bar fights were at least a monthly occurrence, and this was not the first time most people had seen Mickey lay someone out in one hit, he generally did not fight without being severely provoked and for a very good reason. In fact, Mickey hadn’t fought anyone in more than a year, so the new crew, including the man bleeding from his nose, had never seen it coming.

The man who had been sitting next to Vadim slowly got off his bar chair, holding his hands up in a sign of surrender before bending down to check on his friend, whose profusely bleeding nose was thankfully not broken. Before he could open his mouth to address Mickey, a loud, authoritative voice boomed through the bar, cutting off whatever was about to be said.

“Right boys, playtime is over, get back to your drinks!”

The bar patrons mumbled a bit before turning their backs to the spectacle and returning to their usual conversations and drinks. Artur’s voice brought Mickey back to the present, and the present dilemma he had so stupidly created in a fit of temporary insanity. The older man had worked with Mickey for over half his career, had earned Mickey’s trust many times over and was someone Mickey considered to be a good friend, which was the only reason Mickey allowed Artur to coax him outside with the promise of a smoke _(“I don’t smoke anymore.” “Yeah but I do, so deal with it, boss.”)._ Before long, Mickey would deeply inhale the balmy post-summer air and Artur’s second-hand smoke to try and clear his head so he could evaluate the consequences of his actions. Though he knew he wouldn’t lose his job over something as stupid as a bar fight, he still needed these men to _want_ to work for him, and decking one for no apparent reason was generally not a great way to earn, or keep, their respect. He still had no clue how Lena was involved in all of this, and though he sincerely hoped they had been talking about a different Lena, he somehow knew it had been _his_ Lena.

Artur waited until he had finished his second cigarette to address Mickey, knowing that his boss needed a little time to cool off and come to his senses. He flicked the cigarette stub away before turning to his friend, who still appeared to be glaring into the distance, albeit without a murderous expression on his face, which Artur considered to be a plus.

“So, how’s the family?” he decided to open the conversation with, knowing which way this was going to go.

“Fine,” was the grumbled response. Artur suppressed an eyeroll and a deep sigh, and soldiered on.

“Did Ian hear back from that hospital job yet?” Artur continued. Mickey shook his head, glancing in Artur’s direction without really looking at him.

“No, we’re still waiting for a confirmation that he actually got the job, but some of the nurses have already told him they’re really excited to be working with him so he’s pretty sure he got it.”

“Gossipy bunch huh, those nurses,” Artur joked. A snort escaped Mickey’s nose and he cracked a smile.

“You should talk, man.”

Mickey’s smile slowly died down as he sighed and returned to glaring into the distance. Artur could no longer repress the eyeroll, wanting Mickey to get his drama queen moment over with already so he could go back inside and finish his beer _(which had very likely already been claimed by someone else, the bastards)_. He decided to just rip that band-aid off.

“Well, the boys have a bet going on about how long it’ll take the boy Lena is dating to break when he’s face to face with you.”

“They WHAT?!”

That definitely got the drama queen moment started. Mickey whipped his head around to look Artur in the face, his mouth hanging open and his big, blue eyes startled. Artur would have laughed if he had any reassurance that Mickey wouldn’t deck him too, being all hyped up in the moment and all. At least Mickey’d feel bad about decking _him_ afterward, but Artur would have to bare the physical pain, so for now, his face displayed a nice, passive and judgment-free expression.

Mickey, having realized he had a) shouted and b) was exaggerating for the second time that hour, closed his mouth, took a deep breath, cracked his neck both ways and returned a seemingly-calmer gaze to Artur’s.

“They. _What._ ” he tried again, pushing his words through clenched teeth in a tone that spoke volumes.

“It has been rumored that Lena is dating Tony, you know, Sarah’s nephew, the one who won that big hockey game two months ago, about yay tall, brown hair or something…”

“Tony,” Mickey growled, trying to visualise Sarah’s nephew who had been around the head office a few times because Sarah was taking care of a few things for his sick mother. Brown, mousy hair falling in his stupid face, a lean but strong hockey player built, a junior or maybe senior at Lena’s high school, a boy, a man, a--

“Damnit, settle the fuck down, Milkovich,” Artur snapped his fingers in front of Mickey’s face, rolling his eyes at Mickey as he was being glared at once again, “he’s just a boy, he’s not a threat to Ms. Milkovich-Gallagher. Did you _see_ the black eye on that guy that Lena decked last week? Yeah, she’s fine. No one here is worried about _Lena_.”

Mickey instead visualized the guy at school who had been sprouting some homophobic crap around Lena a week earlier. Much like her father, the story was that she had calmly walked up to the homophobic bastard and executed a perfect punch to the face before walking away just as calmly. She had received detention at school, which she sucked up without complaint, and it was only because one of Mickey’s gossipy colleagues had asked how Lena’s fist was doing that he had reason to believe anything had happened to her at all. Lena, daughter to Svetlana and niece to Mandy, could definitely take care of herself. Mickey took a deep breath and pressed the palms of his hands to his eyes, trying to relax his tight shoulders as he let out an unhappy groan. His daughter was fine. His daughter would be fine. His daughter could knee boys in the balls like she was made to do it. His daughter’s physical safety was probably not at risk as much as he (dis)liked to think it was.

“Alright,” Mickey said in a much calmer voice, having somewhat come to terms with Lena’s ability to defend herself physically if necessary, “what the fuck is this bet, and why didn’t you tell me about it sooner.”

Artur shrugged casually, taking out another cigarette to deal with the upcoming conversation.

“I didn’t realize they were talking about _Lena_ till today. I think this whole thing started with Tony walking in with too smug of a face and a huge hickey on his neck, and people started talking-- you know how they are.”

Mickey did know how they were. They were worse than a group of old housewives in a small village playing bridge. They were worse than the Gallaghers when Carl brought home a new boy- or girlfriend. They were probably worse than the nurses at the hospital, though that had not yet been scientifically proven. Mickey oddly longed for a cigarette, not so much for its taste and nicotine hit as for something to occupy his hands and mouth with. He shoved his hands in his pockets instead and looked to the sky for-- inspiration, patience, wisdom, who knew.

“How many people are in on this bet?”

Artur grimaced, knowing this part was going to piss Mickey off at the very least.

“The usuals, Sarah obviously, Vadim and company, and there may be some that I don’t know of. My best estimate is about 8 to 11 people, disregarding anyone who may have just joined because of your little outburst.”

Mickey internalized his groan this time around, opting instead to just close his eyes and count to twenty, reaching twelve and then giving up.

Within the crew he supervised, he had put down strict rules on inter-collegial and inter-departmental betting, considering that he needed his men and women to still be able to properly work together after losing bets, as well as with other departments. After the fifth bar fight, second on-site shouting match and one almost screwed-up job, he had gone off on the whole crew one afternoon, banning the betting altogether and threatening to fire the next person who so much as _thought_ to place money on the chance of something happening or not. After sending the whole crew home early to think of their sins _(and the money they’d be losing by not working),_  Artur had stayed behind and dragged Mickey to a bar on the other side of town where they wouldn’t run into his crew or colleagues, letting Mickey bitch to his heart’s content. Later that night, Ian would suggest to allow the betting to continue, but only within certain guidelines, and a week later, Mickey would introduce everyone to a short set of rules within which betting was allowed. Begrudgingly, the crews complied, with the occasional indiscretions, but with minimum professional fall-out overall.

They had managed to last 5 months without any major indiscretions. This particular bet would bring the countdown sheet in his office back to ‘0 Days Without Incidents’.

Mickey opened his eyes, rolled his shoulders back and steeled his face into the mask he used to lecture Lena and Yevgeny. He hated public speaking, hated publicly _lecturing_ a bunch of grown men and women even more, but after pep-talking his crews for over 7 years, he had since learned how to motivate, or professionally scold, larger groups of people in his industry.

Artur raised an eyebrow but otherwise did not comment on Mickey’s Disappointed Father Face, as he called it, secretly hoping he could slip out before the lecturing was set to begin. However, when Mickey started moving towards the door, he looked over his shoulder at Artur and tilted his head toward the entrance, indicating Artur to follow him inside. Artur sighed, taking one last drag from his cigarette before flicking it away from him and breathing out, reluctantly following Mickey into the bar.

Having come up with the broadest definition of a plan he could think of and being calm enough to swallow his annoyance at having to deal with this mess, Mickey sauntered in to stand still where the majority of his crew could see him, and everyone else could hear him. The bar chatter died down to a soft murmur when most people turned around to look at him, and Artur patted him on the shoulder before walking back to his spot at the bar, noting that someone had indeed taken care of his beer for him. Mickey looked around the room slowly, his eyebrows raising up as he went. He felt his Dad persona bubble to the surface as he had to simultaneously justify his previous outburst, punish the few, and entertain the masses. After all, _panem et circenses_ , bread and games, was a tried and true strategy for the well-being of the population, and happened to work like a charm on construction workers as well.

Mickey cleared his throat and clasped his hands in front of him to indicate that he was ready to speak, and not happy about it.

“Alright, listen up,” he started, his voice authoritative and confident but not condescending, loud without screaming. “There is currently a bet going on which concerns myself and my daughter, Lena.”

Mickey paused, raising his eyebrows in an expression of complete and utter parental disappointment. A few people let out a groan of complaint at _someone_ having tattled on their bet, though no one dared look directly in Artur’s direction for fear of _his_ wrath on top of Mickey’s. Mickey jerked his head sideways to look at one particularly loud couple talking and they, and the rest of the bar, shut up again to listen to the next part of his lecture.

“And honestly, I should go through every single one of you like I did with Vadim--,” Mickey pointedly looked at a few of his most gossipy crew members to emphasize that he knew _(or at least made a fairly educated guess)_ as to who else was in on the bet, “for starting a bet related to my _teenage_ daughter.”

A collective grunt of understanding followed, some looking in Vadim’s direction and nodding knowingly-- it was not allowed to bet on anything directly related to underaged kids. Vadim looked a little sheepishly into his glass, nodding slightly to himself as well.

“Having said that, Sarah--,” he shot Sarah a dark look, “and I are going to have a long, interesting talk, and in order for y’all to get some of your good karma back, you’re all going to contribute half of those bets that I know she has in escrow to Lena’s college fund.”

Mickey’s statement brought a ripple of laughter from the crowd as most of the patrons, especially those not involved in the bet, chuckled and pointed out each other’s misery at having already lost half a bet that hadn’t even started yet. A few men grumbled and looked unhappy, but no one was willing to voice any of it considering that they had very clearly broken one of the cardinal betting rules. The fact that Mickey hadn’t ripped them a new one yet was surprising enough.

Observing the overall mood in the bar, Mickey knew that his next statement was going to make or break the plan he had come up with just 3 minutes before, knew that he needed to keep his crew happy and the audience entertained for him to pull this off. He waited a few seconds for the teasing to subside and played the crowd a little, running his hand through his hair, studying his FUCK tattoo, motioning to the bartender, Roksana, for a new beer while letting his Dad persona fade away into a more relaxed Mickey, subtly indicating that the worst of the storm had passed.

As people took note of the change in Mickey, the chuckles turned into excited whispers, and someone catcalled for good measure. Mickey winked in the general direction of the catcaller and earned another few deep chuckles, and he smirked before starting up again.

“Alright, alright, pipe it down over there, you’re not out of the shithole yet.”

Roksana smacked the bar twice and people turned back around to face Mickey once more.

“Knowing you lot, y’all are too far gone to let this bet go--” he waved his hand in the crowd’s general direction, one eyebrow raised as he pointedly looked at a few people who spontaneously tried to hide their guilty expressions, “so I am hereby appointing myself as the official referee to this bet. Anyone stepping out of line deals with me, _personally_.”

“Noted!” yelled Sarah from her seat, acting in her capacity of Official Bet Administrator, and Mickey nodded at Sarah’s confirmation.

Mickey brought his shoulders back and rubbed his lip with his middle finger, casually flipping off a few people while appearing pensive.

“But, you know, I think I’m gonna need some volunteers,” he announced as if the thought had just occurred to him, “just some people to help me… _evaluate_ , if you know what I mean.”

He saw a few people nod at him, following his train of thought, starting to talk amongst themselves again as ideas started bubbling up in their heads, and he nodded back while looking around the room as if searching for something in particular.

“I could always talk to this boy in a ehm… _trusted_ environment, like a bar or something…”

The bartender whooped, realizing she’d probably have a front row seat if the bet was to be played out in her bar.

“...and maybe there’d be some people in this bar, you know, some tough, Russian men with the big muscles that smell like they haven’t seen a shower in a week,” he wiggled his eyebrows at one of his crew members that looked like he ripped off the heads of chickens for fun on a weekend, but was honestly one of the sweetest people he had ever worked with, “or just some dangerous-looking bikers having a few beers before biking off to their next little road trip,” Mickey winked at his favorite lesbian biker-couple who had traveled throughout the American continent on their Harley Davidsons, bringing back beautiful pictures and amazing stories of where they’d been and what they’d done.

“Or some old guy who farts a lot!” yelled Victor from the back of the group, poking Artur in the ribs with his elbow.

“Yeah, you can come too, Victor,” Artur retorted loudly, soft laughter ringing out.

“So what’s this project called, boss?” wondered Roksana loudly from behind the bar, subtly shouting over the brooding excitement, and the bar went quiet for a brief moment as people held their collective breaths, waiting for Mickey to award a name to a bet; the highest honour a bet could have within their company. Mickey’s mind went blank, not having imagined anyone asking him to name the bet based on his daughter, and the only thing he could think of came out instead.

“Reka,” he all but whispered, and the name was repeated by his crew at an escalating volume until the people in the back could finally hear it.

“One free round for Project Reka!” Artur shouted from the back, and that seemed to break the spell of silence on the bar. Loud cheers and laughter rang out from the crew, and a lighter, happier mood descending on the bar as people realized that a) Mickey had not fired their dumb asses over betting on his _daughter_ , b) there was a minor chance they could recover at least half of their money, and c) they were allowed to participate in Project Reka without getting punished for it.

A few more suggestions about what type of people should be present to evaluate Project Reka were yelled out before the excited conversation balanced itself out into the bar’s regular atmosphere, albeit a little louder. Mickey played along, receiving the appreciative pats on the shoulder and beers being pushed in his hands with the utmost grace, eventually even stepping up to Vadim and handing _him_ a beer in silent apology, to which Vadim smiled and cheerfully noted that he had always wanted to know what he looked like with blue eyes. He had a brief conversation with Sarah about how she thought it best to approach the people involved in the bet that weren’t at the bar, and Sarah promised to handle the stragglers and difficult cases-- after profusely apologizing for starting the bet in the first place.

As he made his rounds, Mickey mentally catalogued all the people present in case he needed to verify with Sarah who was going to play along with his new game plan. Once he had reached his limit of social interaction and could step out without too many people noticing, Mickey walked out the door and headed straight to his next destination, his hands itching and his heart pounding in his throat as he thought about all the things he may not have thought of before allowing people to bet on his Lena. The brisk walk mostly cleared his head, leaving just the most pressing of thoughts-- how he was going to tell Ian.

_Fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With special thanks to my Beta, my Omega, those who (politely) kick my ass into finishing chapters, the lovely commentators, all 15 of them guests, those able to catch some (or all) of the references hidden inside and my indirect Russian interpreter.


	8. Doing what the Russians do best

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Spit it out or I call Ian,” she said nonchalantly, going straight for the kill instead of playing with her food first.

A long minute later, a somewhat confused Svetlana opened the front door slowly, not expecting any visitors considering the late hour. Mickey tried to smile at her to put her at ease, but whatever his face was doing wasn’t fooling Svetlana, so with a big sigh and a flick of her hand, she motioned Mickey into her place before locking up again. Mickey walked to the kitchen and sat down on a stool at the breakfast bar as Svetlana put down two glasses and a bottle of her favorite Russian vodka before sitting down on the stool next to him. She filled the glasses with an inch of vodka and moved one in front of Mickey, who grabbed his glass, clinked it to hers and took a sip. After a few minutes of companionable silence, Svetlana’s curiosity couldn’t take it any longer.

“Spit it out or I call Ian,” she said nonchalantly, going straight for the kill instead of playing with her food first. She smirked as Mickey glared at her, and he refilled both their glasses before launching into his story so he could get her (second) opinion. Svetlana made the appropriate noises throughout his story, refilling glasses as needed but otherwise not interrupting Mickey as he ranted through his evening and the week leading up to it. The naming of the project after the Russian word for ‘river’ was the only thing that got him a stunned reaction as Svetlana realized that Mickey had actually remembered that she named Lena after the river that ran through her grandmother’s town. At the end of the story _(“and then I came here!”)_ , she took a sip of her drink while pondering their options, leaving Mickey to anxiously tap his fingers on his thigh as she thought.

Svetlana had known about Tony for weeks, opting not to tell anyone as Lena was now old enough to discuss these things with her parents herself instead of having her mom do the dirty work. Though Svetlana hadn’t met the boy yet, she had anticipated that Lena was most likely going to propose bringing him over to meet her dads in the days to come, if her excited demeanor and ‘subtle’ questions were anything to go by. And Svetlana was also very open to finding out what material this potential _boyfriend_ was made of...

In the end, Svetlana put most of Mickey’s worries to rest, except for the one where he could get out of his situation without The Chin coming into play. Considering that he had not shot down the bet when he could have, The Chin had become an inevitability, so he just had to learn to live with the consequences to his actions _(or so the mother of his children said)_. The Chin Jr. would be present as well, but Mickey had found Lena’s half pack of cigarettes a few days before which could be used to easily deal with that situation. Either way, both Mickey and Svetlana added at least a week of teenage-semi-silent-treatmenting to the list of guaranteed fallouts. Together, they started setting out a basic structure for the plan on how to deal with the aftermath of Project Reka, aptly named the Restoration Plan.

Svetlana would call up Sarah to discuss the transfer of half of the bettings into Lena’s college fund and to keep an eye on some of the boys she knew could get overly excited. She also proposed a basic plan for the bar scene she thought would be easy enough to prepare and execute, but have maximum scare impact on the poor boy. Her personal participation in the execution of that plan was, of course, an unspoken certainty.

As Mickey more calmly sipped his next drink, Svetlana was secretly pleased that he had come to her for a second opinion and support in keeping this bet from harming their daughter in any way. Their two-and-a-half co-parenting style had run into some issues in its experimental phase, and a few more over the years, but the three of them had all-together worked relatively well, dealing with the prejudice of the world regarding two men and their baby-momma raising Yevgeny in two houses and Lena mostly in one, handling the enormous hassle of paperwork and home visits for Ian to officially adopt Lena as his child, and figuring out where to set rules and boundaries for their teenage son and then their teenage daughter so the parents wouldn’t be played out against each other. It was moments like these that made Svetlana thankful for agreeing to Ian’s crazy idea so many years ago, and for carrying their child when she had been unsure if putting another soul on this earth was a good idea.

More than 15 years ago, she had agreed to grant Mickey and Ian full parental custody over Lena, had signed all the necessary paperwork voluntarily and been as perfect a surrogate as she could have managed. Despite how well the three of them worked with Yevgeny, she had been a little sceptic over whether she should be involved in her daughter’s life at all, given all the bad and ugly things the three of them had also been through together, including the rocky start of Yevgeny’s origin story. Mickey and Ian had been in no way obligated to grant her access to and input in Lena’s life, to allow her to be Lena’s mother even though the two of them would give her enough love and affection that a mother, or a third parent, was absolutely unnecessary. But other than the occasional usage of the veto vote on Ian’s part on other subjects, they had never denied Svetlana from teaching their daughter her language and culture, from attending school plays, ballet recitals and martial arts contests, from Lena being the flower girl at Svetlana’s wedding ( _which unfortunately only lasted 3 years_ ), from sleeping over when Lena was having terrible nightmares in kindergarten after her best friend’s mother died of breast cancer and she didn’t want Svetlana to leave her sight because she also had breasts.

In a moment of vulnerability and insanity in the early days of their triple-parenting of two children, Svetlana had once offered to move elsewhere with Yevgeny so the three of them could live a more cohesive family life together with Lena without having to deal with her intrusion. The top of Ian’s head had practically blown off from her ‘offer’, the level of insult too high for him to function for a few moments as Mickey looked on in amusement at Svetlana’s blunder, casually feeding Lena in her high chair and carefully not getting involved in the rant to come. Once Ian could speak again, Svetlana was forced to listen to a red-faced redhead yell at her for more than 10 minutes about the sanctity of family, the devotion it took to build one, the sacrifice it took to keep one, and the love it took to grow, _together_.

He named a million and one examples of how the three of them worked better than any of them separately, or just Mickey and him together. He pointed out all the things he wanted Svetlana to pass on to their daughter, how amazing this bilingual, kick-ass girl was going to grow up with so many loving people around her, and the logistical advantage three people had over two. Svetlana had opened her mouth to try to reply, but Ian didn’t even give her the chance to speak because to _think_ that she could _split up_ Yevgeny and Lena was _preposterous!_ A separate 3 minutes were dedicated to just how inconceivable that idea really was, how much Yevgeny loved his little sister, and how much she loved him, how it would break the little boy’s heart to have his family ripped apart.

Though Mickey had originally planned to wait out the storm, he could feel Ian slowly spiraling down a dark road no one wanted him to go, his own insecurities about whether Svetlana would try to take away the two children that weren’t biologically his, the risk of his disorder popping up its ugly face and destroying all of their hard work, and his usual underlying self-doubt at life in general being fired up at Svetlana for proposing a, in his humble opinion, rather stupid idea. Mickey stepped in and calmly took Ian’s face in his hands, turning him so Ian was facing him instead of Svetlana. Ian fumed at being interrupted mid-rant but held Mickey’s gaze with a glare as Mickey softly explained to Ian that Svetlana was _not_ leaving with Yevgeny, that she did _not_ want to rip apart their family, and that Ian could be assured that Yevgeny and Lena would under no circumstances be separated from each other. They were one family, the five of them together, and they were going to make it work despite all the odds, _together_.

Ian exhaled slowly, his shoulders slumping forward, resting his forehead on Mickey’s shoulder as the wind was taken out of his sails. Svetlana cautiously got up off the couch and walked towards Ian, pulling him carefully out of Mickey’s grip and hugging him tightly, tears welling up in her eyes as she realized she had once been so very wrong about this young man’s dedication to his family, to Yevgeny, to Mickey, to _her_. Mickey stood by awkwardly until Ian grabbed his arm and pulled him into the group-hug, Svetlana’s soft chuckle at Mickey’s facial expression shaking the three of them until everyone was tearing up and grinning at the same time. The tense mood broken, Svetlana squeezed Ian a little more before letting go and grabbed Mickey’s face to kiss him on the cheek. She made up a random excuse to leave a little earlier than usual, thankful that Yevgeny hadn’t woken up from his nap throughout the whole ordeal. Before leaving, she kissed baby Lena on the head, gave Ian a short, tight hug and winked at Mickey as he was cleaning up Lena’s food mess, feeling a little lighter, the future a little brighter for a former whore and single mom in a country without her relatives, friends or people she could trust with her child or her own life.

Considering her rocky start in America, it had taken her a long time to not always put herself first, to actually place her trust in people and make _real_ friends, to not constantly look over her shoulder and expect someone to screw her over like so many people had before, _including_ her blood relatives. And then Mickey and Yevgeny had come around in the most disgusting, brutal and horrific way, but she wouldn’t trade Yevgeny for anything in her life. The fact that Mickey had turned out to be a relatively decent guy who had married her (to save his own skin), had tried to get her to work under more tolerable circumstances (but ended up burning bridges instead), had never forced himself on her (also because he was gay), had never smacked her around (though she was a scary mofo), and had reluctantly turned out to love, and more importantly, want to protect her son (even if it had taken him awhile to get used to the idea) had found herself initially trusting him.

In some of their more quiet moments, when the four of them were living in a strange type of harmony together with Terry in prison and Ian, Mandy and the brothers out and about, she and Mickey would sometimes sit on the couch and share a cigarette, discussing the Rub and Tug or swapping war stories while having a drink. Through each other’s hardships, they came to an unspoken respect and understanding for one another, and though Mickey had in no way been perfect, he had been as close to tolerable and trustworthy as she had managed to find ( _and she had seen plenty of men come and go)_.

She was around when Ian went manic and she  had admired Mickey for sticking with his boyfriend, for trying to figure out what was wrong and how to fix something that no one could see or touch. Granted, she had been a raging storm when Ian had taken Yevgeny on his little ‘road trip’ and had blamed Mickey for allowing that man close to her child, vowing never to trust Ian around him again, hoping someone would find the stupid bastard and shove him in a small room with a tiny window so he could never come close to Yevgeny again.

After finalizing the baby sale, she came home to find that Ian had thankfully been hospitalized and immediately set about trying to get rid of anything ‘Ian’ by throwing out his stuff. This resulted in a screaming match with Mickey about how she wouldn’t throw someone out if they were physically sick or if they had cancer. After Mickey’s subsequent threat of loss of limb, life or the roof above her head if she tried to do anything similar ever again, it became very apparent that Mickey would stay loyal to Ian over her and Yevgeny, so she decided to suck it up and spend as little time as possible at the Milkovich house with her son, locking the bedroom door if she was.

To her surprise, Ian never came back to the Milkovich house, moving back home directly after leaving the psych ward, and taking Mickey with him. Once Svetlana realized she was Queen of the Milkovich castle once more, she had no qualms straightening out her position with the remaining Milkovich brothers. She had long since established that Mickey and Mandy were the ballsy Milkoviches, and the others were easily pushed over if occasionally fed and mostly ignored. Her main concern was how to keep Yevgeny safe, food on the table and a Green Card in her pocket. Future plans and scams had to be planned out and executed in order to keep herself afloat, and she had already started constructing possible future scenarios in her head which included Mickey once Ian mellowed out. She had high hopes for him-- until Mickey managed to get himself thrown into prison for nothing, based on nothing.

Though she couldn’t help him get out of prison, Svetlana had tried to help him while he was in prison, in her own way. Svetlana had always kept in touch with her Russian roots, so to speak, though she hadn’t actively been involved in many mafia deals before then. With Mickey in prison and Nika having fucked off to who knew where, she was without the income from the Rub and Tug and slowly running out of her womb-renting money. Whoring around really didn’t have the same ring to it as before, but through working at Sasha’s massage parlour back in the day, she had met a number of lower ranked Russian mob members; no one big enough to catch the police’s attention but with enough authority within the organization that they could get their hands on money and jobs. After a few ‘meetings’ with one of them, Svetlana got herself a job in a hair and nail salon that doubled as one of the mob’s smaller and more successful money laundering stations for local businesses. The salon employed both locals and Russians, but only those with a Green Card in order to keep the salon from accidentally attracting attention. They trained the girls enough so that they could actually service clients to a decent standard, valuing the cover it provided their back-room business. Supervision in the place was spotty at best, and the bookkeeper meant to manage the day-to-day business and keep track of incoming money was both sleazy and malleable to the point that the smarter girls, and those more gifted with hands or mouth, could easily skim some money off the top. And if Svetlana was anything, it was a gifted individual.

Apart from earning a lot of ‘tips’ on a weekly basis, Svetlana also made good money after learning of a niche market involving passing on messages to get people in prison injured. Her established marriage to Mickey had been the perfect cover not to arouse suspicions of her frequent visits to the prison, and though Mickey only did a fraction of the hits himself, she received a nice share for having other hits communicated to the right people through Mickey. She tried to stay away from too many hits that involved killing, and she made sure that Mickey didn’t know how far she was involved or what exactly she was doing. She  _really_ tried to treat their relationship as a business arrangement only, but she couldn’t help occasionally trying to cheer him up by bringing Yevgeny to see him or giving him whatever news she could find out about Ian through the grapevine.

Mickey thankfully didn’t ask many questions or have many requests, until the one time where he was desperate to see Ian. Frustrated that she had to try and find the redhead in a gutter somewhere, or washing dishes at Patsy’s Pies, as well as run the risk of anyone involving Ian in her business, she nevertheless complied with Mickey’s blackmail, considering that he had her by the balls in a way she couldn’t get out of otherwise. Ian’s apathetic behaviour didn’t sit well with her, and though she knew it would hurt Mickey knowing that she paid Ian to go see him, it had been the only way she could think of to achieve what Mickey had wanted. Ian’s visit was a complete disaster, and she cringed as she watched the interactions from the sidelines, interpreting Mickey’s face to what Ian said so she could figure out how badly Ian had fucked up, and how long Mickey would need to recover. She was getting less and less fond of the redhead that once brought such joy to Mickey’s life, what with the way he treated her men. She wasn’t particularly heartbroken when Ian stopped calling or picking up her calls, though unfortunately Yevgeny would still occasionally perk up when he saw a redheaded person walk by, sometimes even sticking his hand out of his stroller to grab theirs if he could.

When the feds came too close to discovering the money laundry station she was working in, the salon ‘accidentally’ burned all the way to the ground by means of a particularly faulty curling iron and perhaps some gasoline, leaving Svetlana and a bunch of other legal Russian girls on the street with nowhere to work. Taking a page out of Mickey’s book, Svetlana decided to round up these girls and use the money she had put aside to buy into a small, local salon she knew was going under. Though some of the paperwork and business licenses had been a hassle, she bribed and blackmailed her way through the system in record time with a bit of help from the Russian side of things, and legally established herself as a legit business co-owner in the US of A, paying taxes and everything. By chance, her previous ties to the mafia had somehow caught the eye of one particularly high boss’ wife who longed to feel close to her motherland in a country full of Yanks. The bored young woman, stereotypically named Natascha, started spending a lot of time at Svetlana’s salon, surrounding herself with the willing Russian maidens who would gladly speak to her in her mothertongue, who understood her culture and all-around made her feel at home. Svetlana would casually bring in Russian vodka, a few childhood candies here and there, an old classical movie everyone loved until Natascha appeared weekly on her doorstep, frequently bringing her equally bored and rich friends so they could feel like queens in their own little palace of pampering.

Svetlana re-invested the money and gifts she earned from catering to the rich and bored to buy out her co-owner and elevate her business, moving everything to a nicer and busier neighbourhood where she wasn’t dependent on her Russian clientele to pay the bills. Though it took her years of brown nosing and smiling through her teeth, learning how to do her own bookkeeping and taxes, filling in shifts, firing and hiring and firing employees, juggling Yevgeny and work, and occasionally making a terrible mistake or four, Svetlana managed to run a profitable enough business to hire a manager she trusted to oversee the day-to-day work while she did all the admin and paperwork behind the scenes, appearing in the salon for special occasions, special clients and whenever she felt like checking up on business. The mob wives eventually moved on, as she had predicted they would, taking their money, gifts and mob association to the next new thing, and Svetlana continued to try to manage things as legally and un-mob-related as possible, only resorting to B&B ( _blowjobs and blackmail_ ) 1 out of 10 times.

 

* * *

 

After Ian had unexpectedly cut off all contact with her for about a year after their disastrous prison visit with Mickey, Svetlana had been surprised to find a few missed calls from the redhead one fine day. She let it go, not trusting Ian to have voluntarily contacted her, but Ian called again the next day, and the day after that. Svetlana wasn’t sure if she wanted to risk Ian’s involvement in her and Yevgeny’s life again, but her curiosity eventually got the best of her and she picked up her phone on the 5th day Ian called. The conversation was strained, awkward and very one-sided as Svetlana listened to Ian’s apology and agreed to a time and place to have ice cream with Yevgeny so he could further explain his idiocy. Ian had sounded calm and reasonable on the phone, and Svetlana decided to risk this one little ice cream visit to acquire as much knowledge on Ian as possible.

As Yevgeny happily ate his chocolate-chip-and-mango-sorbet cone a week later, Svetlana entertained Ian’s story with a stern face and an occasionally lifting eyebrow. She kept his interactions with Yevgeny short so as not to get the boy too re-attached to his former stepdad considering that she didn’t fully trust Ian to have turned his life around enough to be able to handle such responsibilities. Ian kept the small talk light and easy as Yevgeny ate his ice cream, and they walked to the park so he could play while the adults talked.

Before Svetlana even sat down, Ian started apologizing. He tried to look Svetlana in the eyes when he brought up kidnapping Yevgeny back in the day, but her intense glare wouldn’t allow it for too long. She knew it hadn’t all been him; he had been mentally unstable, unable to control himself. But that didn’t stop her from revisiting the old pain she had felt when she came home to an empty baby carrier, Mickey frantically trying to call him up, trying to calm her down, trying to keep himself together as he realized that Ian was too far gone for him to bring him back. She had hated them both in that moment; her stupid selfish husband and his stupid crazy boyfriend and their stupid fucking problems that had boiled over to swallow her beautiful, innocent son. The pain in Ian’s voice as he talked about how it felt to be manic in that moment and his anguish at having put Yevgeny in danger of himself, of _anything_ , felt real. He took a sideways look at Yevgeny playing in the park when he thought she wasn’t looking, love bleeding out of his eyes as a smile ghosted over his face until he seemed to remember how bad he could have hurt the boy. Svetlana looked away and focused on her ice cream, her heart feeling both lighter and heavier at seeing Ian’s blatant love for her son, but knowing that he had broken her trust once already.

The apology was interrupted when Ian noticed that Yevgeny had started to follow after a cute doggy that was walking by, and he got up and jogged towards the boy before Svetlana could stop him. He grabbed Yevgeny by the hand as if it was the most normal thing in the world, amicably chatting with the dog owner until Yevgeny was allowed to pet the dog. The boy turned around to look at her as he kept petting, beaming a 1000-Watt smile his mom’s way and giggling when the dog licked his hand. Ian stood by him, calmly watching Yevgeny and the dog while still chit-chatting with the owner, looking relaxed, happy and in control-- a far cry from the zombie boy she had seen walking through the neighbourhood after Mickey had been arrested, medicated to an inch of his life and looking like death was just a step away.

As Yevgeny came running back to excitedly tell his mom all about the cute doggy and the nice lady and how he wanted to pet another doggy, Ian walked back a little slower, softly smiling as he stared after the little boy that could have been like a son to him. Ian reached the bench as Yevgeny was asking his mother repeatedly for a doggy, to which Svetlana only responded with a halfhearted nod. The boy beamed a smile at his mother regardless, a carbon copy of what Mickey looked like when he was having a good day and felt like showing it, and Ian felt the sudden itch to grab Yevgeny and hug him tight-- an itch he suppressed with all his might.

Yevgeny ran back to the playground to continue playing, screaming all the way for no good reason, and Svetlana smiled after her son until she caught Ian looking after him in the exact same way. It was hard for her to reconcile the Ian in front of her with the boy she last saw (and hated), the one she had to pay to go visit his lover in prison when he was the reason Mickey was in there. She noticed how his smile melted off his face as a thought struck him, and she looked away before he could see that she noticed, not wanting to be part of his misery just yet.

Ian cleared his throat and turned back to face her, a new and reassuring smile on his face that didn’t reach his eyes. He took a deep breath and kept talking as if Yevgeny and the dog hadn’t interrupted his flow, the words tumbling out of his mouth as if he needed to get them out before they choked him. He didn’t leave much room for her to interject in his monologue, and Svetlana wasn’t keen to keep him longer than necessary as all the sorrow and regret he was bombarding her with caused mixed emotions within her that she would love to live without. Being cold had always been her default setting, but Yevgeny had long turned her demeanor into some randomly soft, mushy woman she wouldn’t have recognized 5 years ago. Having Ian’s life, and the loss of his two loves, played out before her from his point of view apparently had some effect on her too.

After the very thorough apology regarding his past behavior, including their disastrous prison visit, Ian looked wrung out and tired. Svetlana opened her mouth to tell him that Yevgeny remembered almost nothing of that time to ease some of his pain, but Ian took another deep breath and let it out slowly, a real smile appearing on his face that made her stop the words from coming out. He started up again, his eyes hopeful this time as he explained to her, in great detail, all the ways he had been getting help and establishing a stable work and therapy routine while living on his own. Though he seemed happy to tell her all about it, it felt like he was reading from a book, a speech rehearsed and replayed so many times, and she wondered how often he must have repeated his accomplishments out loud for someone to hear what he was saying, or for himself to believe it. He seemed proud to have accomplished what he had so far, happy with the little he had because it was _his_ , and he had worked hard to be where he was. He had short and medium term future plans, he had emergency plans, he had backup plans; Ian had plans coming out of his ass as long as it would get him where he wanted to be-- stable. It seemed the young, erratic orange boy she kept in the back of her mind had indeed grown up a bit.

Though he seemed to have gotten his apology and story out, she felt he was holding something back, something related to her and Yevgeny, so she waited him out as he fidgeted with the hem of his shirt and stared at Yevgeny playing in the park. She could see the naked fear enter his thoughts as something inside him clicked, and she quickly checked around to see if something was threatening her son, but Yevgeny was calmly going down a slide while yelling at a girl to come slide with him. After keeping her eyes on her son and the girl for a few moments to make sure Ian hadn’t seen something dangerous that she missed, she turned back to Ian to be unexpectedly faced with a full blast of Ian’s puppy-eyes. Unfortunately, Svetlana didn’t respond well to being shocked into submission, and she immediately retreated to the defense, her eyes blazing as Ian’s hope wilted in her anger.

“I-,” he started off, swallowing hard and looking down as he nervously wiped his hands on his knees, all his hope bleeding out of him. “I’m bette--, I’m g--, I’m doing really well and…”

“And _what_ , carrot boy!” she interrupted, fire spitting from her voice as Ian struggled to get to his point.

“Well, I--,” Ian looked up to find waves of rage rolling off Svetlana’s body, her eyebrows raised and her eyes hard, cold and unforgiving. The words he had rehearsed so often at home abruptly disappeared from his brain.

“You think you come here and beg forgiveness and ask Yevgeny back with one ice cream?”

“No, never, Svet, I would--”

“Mickey gets arrested because of _you--”_

“But Svet--”

“--and you take your shit and go back to Gallaghers, you don’t call, don’t care what happens to Yevgeny after _you_  get his father thrown in prison!”

“It wasn’t my--”

“First you kidnap my child, then you lock up my husband and YOU NEVER VISIT HIM!”

“ _Please_ , I--”

“HOW ARE YOU GOING TO FIX ALL THAT!”

“I AM _TRYING_ TO FIX ALL THAT!”

The two adults glared at each other from across the bench, Ian breathing hard while he tried to control his temper, balling and unballing his fists as Svetlana scowled at him, satisfied at having pushed Ian this far and secretly impressed by how Ian hadn’t given up yet, hadn’t retreated with his tail between his legs. She stole a quick glance around the park to make sure Yevgeny was still safely playing on the swings before returning to glare a hole into Ian’s face. She had no place for another weakling in her inner circle, no time to deal with somebody else’s issues and drama and having them spill over into her life. Having finally achieved some semblance of stability, she wasn’t going to give that up for the boy who once loved her son like his own, even if she thought she could occasionally use some help. Svetlana leaned back against the bench, arms crossed in front of her chest and one eyebrow raised in impatience as she waited for him to figure his shit out.

Ian cracked a little under Svetlana’s glare, not knowing whether he had just completely screwed up any chance of a relationship with Yevgeny, or if there was still some way to salvage part of it. He had once been able to read Svetlana’s moods like his sisters’, but that time was long gone, and her trust in him with it. Wiping his hands on his jeans once more, he took a few deep breaths and glanced at the park to make sure Yevgeny hadn’t run after another dog. He sat up straight and steeled his back, ready to go back into battle against a Russian war tank.

“Svet... I’m here for Mickey. I--” His flow hampered when he noticed Svetlana’s face going from merely impatient to extremely skeptical. He chuckled, lifting his hands up in front of him in a sign of surrender before dropping them back in his lap.

“Look, I hurt Mick, I know,” a sarcastic laugh escaped his mouth as Mickey’s shocked face on the other side of the glass flashed before his eyes, “I think I hurt him _a lot_ , to be honest. But I’m going to try and fix that too, because, well--,” he shrugged, looking a bit sheepish, “I love him.”

He looked up at Svetlana, unshed tears gleaming in his eyes as he looked deep into hers, a soft smile playing on his lips.

“I love him, and he’s it for me, you know?”

He lapsed into silence as his gaze went distant, his happy smile fading into itself as Ian’s face turned somber, his eyes moving from side to side as his past grievances reared their ugly heads in his mind. Ian looked around to try to find Yevgeny, still playing with a bunch of kids and a stick, trying to distract his thoughts from going too dark, and focusing on the happily yelling kids for a moment before taking a deep breath and turning back to face Svetlana.

“I made a very big mistake-- multiple mistakes even, but I need to do this, I _need_ to fix this mess that I made.”

Svetlana didn’t answer, didn’t want to be asking questions when clearly Ian was speaking from a place where he couldn’t hear her anymore.

“And Mick loves Yevgeny-- _I_ love Yev, but Mick… you can see how much he cares, even when he pretends to be all cool and aloof, you can see that little boy matters to him.”

Ian took another quick glance at Yevgeny and then dropped his gaze to the bench, fiddling with the hem of his shirt again.

“And he matters to me, too, Svet. I’ve missed him, and-- you, a little, I guess,” an embarrassed little smile flitted across his lips, “I miss what we had. And when Mickey comes back out, I think he’s going to want to get to know his kid, so I don’t want to be the person standing in the way of you and him because… I’m going to be there for him from now on.”

Ian’s smile dropped completely, and it felt like the weight of the world settled down on his shoulders as he sighed deeply. His voice dropped to a whisper, and Svetlana wondered if Ian was in any way aware of his surroundings, of her sitting right in front of him as a lonely tear fell into his lap.

“I’ll be there for him if he lets me.”

She was intrigued by Ian’s sudden outpour of emotion, having lived with him when he was in a mostly manic or depressed state, and neither extreme of him had evoked such sincere passion and regret as he was displaying now. She had always found Mickey to be the one more vocal and open about his love and affection, pouring his heart and soul into Ian and their pursuit of happiness. Ian, she had always found selfish. He seemed so… unfulfilled, like nothing was ever good enough and he needed Mickey to give and give, to say the words he didn’t return, to come out to his father who he was rightfully afraid of, and then would turn around and leave him all alone when he felt he hadn’t been given everything that he had wanted, like a petulant child throwing a tantrum. But Mickey succumbed every time, gladly giving Ian everything he wanted so Ian could be happy, helping Ian every time he hid a snag, practically dragging him through the first stages of his disease when Ian’s own family just looked on from the sidelines and went on with their own lives, subsequently kicking Mickey to the curb when things got difficult.

Mickey was loyal, supportive, dependable, stable-- all features Svetlana admired in a person. He may not have been the best husband to her, but he was a good person, and every time she saw him hurting and pouting over Ian, she had to refrain herself from telling him to man up and find someone worthy of his energies. But she never did. She knew what love looked like, even though she had never seen one so cruel and all-consuming as theirs, like bursts of flames tiptoeing the line between pleasure and pain. Back then, she hadn’t believed that Ian deserved Mickey, but what did love ever have to do with deserving. In her experience, love was selfish, and meant having power over the other person and using it to make yourself happy, practically stealing their life force until you were satisfied yourself. The fact that Ian was ready to start giving more than he was taking meant more than he himself probably realized, and Svetlana found it strangely satisfying to see Ian finally stepping up to the plate for Mickey, taking action instead of waiting for things to go his way in their relationship.

A few moments passed in silence until a child screaming loudly snapped Ian out of his trance, quickly wiping away the tears that were threatening to fall and pasting a weak smile on his face as he looked up at Svetlana’s contemplative gaze. Svetlana looked away to give him a moment to collect himself, turning her body towards the park to check up on Yevgeny’s stick battle with three of the neighbourhood girls. From her peripheral vision, she saw Ian run his hand through his hair, sigh deeply and turn himself around to look at Yevgeny play as well. They both chuckled as Yevgeny dramatically threw himself to the ground when one girl smacked him on his arm with her stick, the other two girls cheering at their victory while running around them in a circle.

“I miss my life, Svet,” Ian quietly admitted, his eyes still following Yevgeny as the little boy got off the ground and ran along with the girls to go play on the slides. “I miss my life, and I’m working to fix what is still fixable to get it back.”

He turned back to face her, waiting until she turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. He was biting his lip nervously, his eyes trained on hers in the hoped of finding an ounce of compassion in her carefully neutral expression.

“Can I…” he started, the nerves making his voice tremble, but he pressed on, needing to know the answer even if it was going to hurt. “Can I still fix this, Svet?”

Svetlana looked at him for a few heartbeats before turning her gaze back to the park, leaving Ian to think the worst. He was right about Mickey wanting to get to know Yevgeny; she could see the joy in his eyes whenever she brought their son with her to visit him, though he would mostly hide his fondness under passive aggressive comments and indirect questions about Yevgeny’s health, education and general progress. He was probably also right that he and Mickey could get back together after Mickey got out of prison, because Mickey had yet to ever give up on Ian in the way that Ian had just disregarded Mickey’s existence for a year. So by Svetlana’s calculations, the chance of Ian coming back into her life was big enough that she should consider giving him a trial run before Mickey came back around. Furthermore, she could always use a free babysitter.

She took a deep breath, praying to her God that she wouldn’t end up regretting the words coming out of her mouth by way of the redhead’s blood one day staining her hands.

“You are on probation with me,” she began, raising one eyebrow at him so he knew she was talking to him. Ian nodded quickly at her, paying rapt attention to all she had to say. “We come to park every Wednesday and Friday at 3.30 pm so Yevgeny can play with his friends.”

Ian kept nodding, mentally already penciling the days into his calendar and wondering whether he could request the early morning shifts on those days.

“And bring baseball next week, he likes to play catch.”

And with that, she grabbed her purse, shot him a knowing smirk and walked onto the playground to go fetch Yevgeny. Ian stood up from the bench but didn’t follow her, waiting instead for Yevgeny to turn towards him so he could wave goodbye, his face straining from his smile and his heart threatening to pound out of his chest of happiness.

 

* * *

 

It took some scheduling and organizing, but Ian managed to push and pull all parts of his life to make space for Yevgeny and Svetlana. They started off slowly with park playdates until Yevgeny one day invited Ian to dinner (right before puppy-eyeing his mother). Ian stammered and stuttered a bit, not knowing whether Svetlana had approved of this plan beforehand and not wanting to overstep her boundaries, but she just gave a big sigh and told him to bring dessert.

Once Ian got up the courage to visit Mickey in prison again, Svetlana could see a weight having lifted off his shoulders. Mickey clearly hadn’t turned down Ian’s visits, be it out of curiosity, blatant boredom in prison or lingering feelings of love, and Ian felt more and more hopeful as time went on. Svetlana still visited Mickey on a regular basis to talk business, but also joined a few of Ian’s visits with Yevgeny upon Ian’s request. Mickey seemed far happier to see his two favorite men than when she came alone, but she didn’t take it personally considering that everyone was always happier to see Yevgeny than her. Her beautiful son was a bright ray of hope and sunshine to those around him, and she sometimes wondered how Mickey was holding onto hope in prison when they said goodbye and hung up the phone.

It turned out that when Ian really set his mind to something, he was hellbent to reaching his goals. In his quest to redemption, he helped her with Yevgeny and around the house whenever his work and therapy schedules allowed it, and Yevgeny started feeling more and more comfortable around Ian. When Yevgeny learned that Ian had his own home, he practically begged his mom to go play at Ian’s one day, and Svetlana’s curiosity got the better of her. Walking into Ian’s small, yet neat, apartment, she could see how serious he had been about improving himself. A dingy bookcase in the corner of the room sported many well-read self-help and medical books, his fridge was stocked with healthy food amidst a bit of takeout, a whiteboard calendar displayed all the important appointments he had, which mostly amounted to work, therapy, Yevgeny, Mickey and the Gallaghers, and his pills were perfectly ordered in his medicine cabinet. Though she hoped Ian could keep up the momentum he had built and not overdo all the good work, she was proud of him to have come as far as he had. Which is why she only raised one very questioning eyebrow when he asked to bring Yevgeny with him to his prison visits on the days that Svetlana wouldn’t be able to come.

Life went on, and Svetlana started to feel like Ian had become part of her little family, that she could count on him to care of Yevgeny if anything were to happen to her. Not that she would let anything happen to her _or_ Yevgeny, but on dark nights when the night distorted the city’s sounds and her dreams were filled with old enemies, she hoped that Yevgeny would be spared the heartbreak of losing a parent at a young age like she and Mickey had, the loss of innocence due to the circumstances they were born into, the decisions others made for them that they would carry with them for the rest of their lives. Her Russian coldness and natural bravado generally had people assuming that she knew everything, was in control of everything, had a plan for everything-- and she gladly let them think just that because it made life easier for her. But where Yevgeny was concerned, she doubted every step of the way, from her decision to teach him Russian to the jobs she did to put food on the table, the school she put him on because that was all she could afford, the time she could spend with him in between trying to keep her life from falling apart at the seams. She was terrified that Yevgeny would grow up like her, knowing the hardships of life because there was no way to survive life without it, not even for a child. So she would wake up every morning with a mission to make sure that no one fucked with Yevgeny Milkovich, because the moment anyone so much as hurt a tiny hair on his head, this Russian ex-whore would come for your kidneys.

The news that Mickey would be getting out of prison after his bullshit charges were dropped were a bit of a shock to Svetlana. She had already set out her short and medium term plans in life, and Mickey was only set to reappear in 5 to 7 years. She also had no idea what man Mickey had become in prison, and though Yevgeny had always been happy to see his dad behind glass for 10 to 15 minutes, it was a whole different story for Mickey to actually be around in their everyday lives. Secondly, Mickey’s reappearance would mean a significant change in Ian’s life, and Ian’s priorities, and Svetlana anticipated that Ian’s involvement in Yevgeny’s life would be set aside at least a little bit until the Mickey-and-Ian fire had settled down after rekindling.

Upon Mickey Milkovich’s upcoming return to the prairie, the other Milkoviches had also become a point of concern for Svetlana, because where one Milkovich went, the others generally had some involvement as well. Though the younger brood offered her no heartache, Svetlana was concerned about Terry’s inevitable release from prison, and his subsequent influence on Mickey’s life-- and Ian’s, hers and Yevgeny’s as a consequence.

Terry’s presence in Mickey’s life had always been a gigantic maelstrom, creating chaos and uncertainty where she wanted stability and clear, calm waters. Back in the day, she hadn’t had the means or felt the need (or the nerve) to intervene in Mickey’s life, letting father and son deal with their issues as long as it didn’t involve her and her son. But in her current situation, with her future planned out the way she wanted it to be, Terry’s far-reaching terror was nagging in the back of her skull, making her fingers itch when she wasn’t preoccupied with other issues to solve.

She tried to think of scenarios where Terry wouldn’t come into contact with Yevgeny ever again, wouldn’t corrupt the beautiful soul of her son like he clearly had his own children, but her only means of income were right within the territory that Terry could terrorize. Terry’s proud ‘grandpa’ smile during Yevgeny’s christening started keeping her awake at night, her dreams filling more and more with a traumatized Yevgeny, a bleeding Yevgeny, Svetlana and Mickey trying to protect Yevgeny from Terry drunkenly lashing out for no good reason but not being able to stop him hurting the boy because Terry had always been more ruthless than his youngest son and more capable of doing physical harm than his daughter-in-law. The image of Mickey, on the couch, bleeding from his head as she was told to fuck him at gunpoint once popped up in her head as Yevgeny mentioned Mickey’s release from prison, and Svetlana had to run to the bathroom to dry heave over the toilet as the thought of that man coming anywhere near her child came over her, doing to him what he had already done to his.

That was the last straw.

The Russian did what she did best, what she had already done for others a hundred times in the past 3 years. She used one of her newer contacts that still had to prove himself to her in order to be granted more contracts by the mob, one that couldn’t yet be traced back to her. Though she would had preferred for the incident to happen before Mickey’s release, it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. The collect call from prison bringing her the coded news was like listening to her loving grandmother’s voice, singing away the worries of a young child while dancing in the meadow next to the river as they had done before her father shattered the life of a young woman. She was done with fathers ruining the lives of their children. She was done with men having power over her and the ones she loved. And though she had acted mostly out of self-interest and self-preservation, she hoped it gave Mickey peace to think of his father’s terrified face as he bled to death on the bathroom floors of the prison showers after being told that his Russian whore said goodbye.

_Спокойной ночи, дедушка._


	9. Phase 3: The Restoration Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All the lights in the living room and kitchen were shining at full strength, and 12 slow steps took Mickey to the same spot he had been in a few hours earlier, now holding one grocery bag instead of two, his husband casually lounging on the couch instead of his daughter and her ‘boyfriend’ going at it.

As Ian stormed out the door, Mickey hoped that the backlash to Project Reka would be as he and Svetlana had anticipated so they could safely move onto Phase 3; the Restoration Plan.

As was part of the plan, Mickey had kept his cool in the face of fuming fury (also known as Ian Milkovich-Gallagher) and had managed not to further escalate the situation. Svetlana had quickly settled down and poker faced her way through the quick and scalding lecture Ian delivered to the two adults before Ian had yanked an unprepared Tony right off his seat and whirlwinded back out the door with the two teenagers in tow, Lena trying to keep up with his giant strides while unsuccessfully glaring at her biological parents over her shoulder. When the bar’s front door smacked shut again, Mickey let out a deep sigh, mentally cursing every single one of his gossipy-as-fuck crew members for putting him in that situation.

The groveling required to smooth it all over with Ian was anticipated to be significant, and the first part of Svetlana’s delicately and comprehensively drawn-up Restoration Plan included for Mickey to bring home the multiple, individually wrapped portions of Ian’s favorite lasagna that she had pre-made and stored in the bar’s freezer since last Tuesday. Though it wouldn’t cancel out not having told Ian immediately about the bet, the warm, melty and deliciously cheesy lasagna would hopefully mellow Ian out enough to be able to talk through part of the situation until The Chin® could return in full. Svetlana’s philosophy was that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Mickey had started arguing that it was probably a very sharp knife and some upper body strength until Svetlana’s glare made him chuckle and change the topic.

Once home, Ian would hopefully also realize that his favorite bottle of wine was already chilling in the back of their fridge, skillfully hidden from anyone not royally pissed off and looking for a drink, as also detailed in the Restoration Plan. With those two key preparations in place, Mickey hoped to smoothly sail to some minor Chinning®, a little bit of groveling and a whole lot of make-up sex with the hubby. To be followed up by some teenage lecturing.

Mickey took a deep breath and slowly rolled his head back in a half circle, releasing some of the tension in his shoulders. Svetlana grinned at him knowingly, extremely happy that Mickey would be taking most of the heat though she knew she’d eventually feel some of Ian’s fire as well, considering that she had clearly been premeditatively involved. She chuckled softly, thinking back at Tony’s constant deer-in-the-headlights expression, wishing she could have seen what the boy looked like when he had first walked into the darkened, threatening bar full of pseudo-Russians. Mickey turned to look at her, his mouth curving into a smile at Svetlana’s face, and his smile only made Svetlana laugh harder, which made him chuckle, to which she snorted, and it wasn’t long until the both of them were laughing so hard that Svetlana was holding her stomach and feeling her abs hurt while utterly failing to control her snorting as Mickey was wiping the tears from his eyes and trying to return some oxygen into his lungs.

As their pent up nerves and adrenaline were released and their adrenaline highs finally crashed, Mickey rubbed his eyes and groaned, wishing someone would spike his vodka with coffee to boost him back up so he could deal with the hurricane at home. They both sat back in silence for a few minutes, thoughts blank and gazes distant. Svetlana was the first to recover from the low, blowing out a deep breath and running her hands through her hair to loosen it up a bit. She cracked her neck sideways, groaning slightly before she poked Mickey in the arm to make him move instead of staring blankly ahead of him.

“Orange man will be waiting by now. You have begging to do.”

A snort escaped him, and he grimaced slightly, looking around the bar again at the people that had helped kick him into the doghouse for the next few days. He was definitely going to use that to guilt-trip a bunch of them into doing things for him in the upcoming weeks, especially considering that they had all been privy to how pissed off Ian had seemed. But Ian would get over it. Ian always got over things that weren’t life threatening or permanently harming, albeit with time. So Ian would get over this too. Hopefully.

Svetlana gave him a peck on the cheek goodbye and unsubtly started pushing him out of the booth until he flailed his arms and got out of the booth on his own, giving her his hand to help shimmy herself out of the booth in her high heels and short dress. Svetlana fixed her dress and shoved her cell phone back into the dress’ pocket before patting him on the shoulder and walking to the pool tables for her coat, cheerfully greeting a bunch of the guys on her way there.

Someone let out a short whistle and Mickey looked up to find Roksana waving at him from the far side of the bar, holding up a grocery bag with presumably the frozen lasagna. Mickey nodded to himself and walked towards her, smiling at the random comments being called his way, raising an amused eyebrow at Artur’s catcall. Svetlana yelled at the boys to settle down, stage-whispering that Mickey needed to go find his firefighter suit so he could deal with the volcano at home. Roksana fake-moaned, winking at Mickey as she loudly _(always loudly)_ praised the tight, perfect asses of firefighters in those cute, yellow suits, and how men in uniform were just hot as hell-- no pun intended. Mickey patiently waited with a raised eyebrow and a hidden smirk for the two women, and a few of his crew members, to have a good firefighting-pun-filled laugh at his expense until Roksana finally gave him the grocery bag and a hot to-go cup, which Mickey secretly hoped was filled with coffee and vodka, but knew to be tea with honey when he cautiously sniffed the top of the cup. He thanked Roksana for the drink, taking off the top so it could cool down faster in the short walk home. He then carefully raised his cup in a silent salute to the people at the bar, and various sounds of goodbye were aimed his direction in return before he turned around and walked into the night, heading for Uncertain Doom and a pissed off lion cub.

Mickey decided to take the long road home, but even that brisk walk wasn’t long enough to cool down the scalding hot tea, and as Mickey walked up the steps to the front door, he cursed himself again for having taken the top off the cup. He had tried to walk slowly, giving Ian more time and equal chances to either calm down or get riled up. Unfortunately, the walk had done nothing positive for _his_ nerves, and he anxiously stood in front of his own door for a few moments, hoping he hadn’t screwed up too much, hadn’t pushed the envelop a little too far by including half the Russians in town, wondering if it hadn’t been better to have shut down the whole bet from the get-go and just risk the silent wrath of his crew. He wanted to rub his eyes, but both of his hands were occupied. He really wanted to have another smoke, but he knew Ian would smell it the moment he walked through the door. He just wanted it all to be over and for the drama to have passed so he could lie peacefully next to his husband at night instead of wondering how long he would have to atone for his sins. With a sigh, Mickey rested his forehead against the front door with a soft thump, still holding the tea in one hand and the grocery bag in the other, and stood there until his thoughts stopped spiraling into darkness.

Slowly straightening up, and trying to picture the sun and the moon and stars and puppies, or whatever it was that people did to attract positive thoughts, Mickey tried to fish his keys out of his pants pocket without putting down the grocery bag. Cautiously juggling the cup, the grocery bag and his keys, he unlocked the front door as quietly as possible, carefully pushing it open as if he were some Northside teenager sneaking in after curfew, hoping his parents were already asleep. Inside, Mickey could hear faint rock music coming from the direction of Lena’s room, verifying the whereabouts of their daughter. All the lights in the living room and kitchen were shining at full strength, and 12 slow steps took Mickey to the same spot he had been in a few hours earlier, now holding one grocery bag instead of two, his husband casually lounging on the couch instead of his daughter and her ‘boyfriend’ going at it.

Ian lay sprawled on their couch, his head on the armrest and his feet spilling over the other side, facing the ceiling with his eyes closed. Mickey noted the half-empty bottle of Ian’s favorite wine on the coffee table, a full glass standing next to it, and mentally thanked Svetlana for her forethought. Whilst debating whether to talk to Ian first or go into the kitchen to preheat the oven, Ian slowly opened his eyes and stretched his arms over his head with a groan, arching his back, the bottom of his shirt riding up. Mickey felt like doing something, anything, feeling nervous for the first time in a long time, and decided on putting down his cup of tea on the coffee table, the tension within him making him smirk at the bottle of wine for no good reason as he straightened back up. Ian had turned around at Mickey’s movement and was watching his husband from his sideways position on the couch.

“Are you laughing at my wine, Mr. Milkovich?”

Ian’s tone was neutral, but not in the carefully controlled way he would use when truly pissed off. Mickey didn’t know what to think of it, and his brain blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“It’s pink, man. Why you gotta like pink wine?”

Ian tried to glare at Mickey but ruined the expression when the side of his mouth curved into a smile before he could suppress it. He turned on his back and faced the ceiling again, trying to school his expression even though the ghost of his smile flickered over his lips as if a funny thought had popped up in his head. When Ian stayed quiet for a few seconds, Mickey took that as his cue to walk towards the kitchen and start up the oven.

“Liking what I like don’t make me a bitch, Mikhailo,” Ian yelled after him from the couch.

Mickey’s step faltered for a split second as Ian’s words triggered something in his brain that he couldn’t quite grasp, like an old memory on the tip of his brain’s tongue. But his brain couldn’t spit out whatever it had triggered, so he shook his head and kept walking into the kitchen, putting the grocery bag on the counter and telling himself to remember to ask Ian where that statement had come from when he was back into Ian’s good graces. Taking a few moments to turn on the oven to the right temperature, he took out three lasagna portions from the bag, placing them on the stove before shoving the other three into the freezer. Movement coming from the couch made him turn around, and Ian came walking towards him with the bottle of wine and wine glass in the one hand, and Mickey’s tea in the other. He put the tea down on the kitchen counter and pushed it closer to Mickey before taking a seat on the bar stool, placing himself directly opposite of Mickey with the counter in between them. A smile played on Ian’s lips again, and Mickey couldn’t quite figure out what Ian was playing at or when the fallout would start.

“Did you ehm...”

Ian stopped mid-sentence and peered into his wine glass as if he would find the rest of his sentence floating around in the pink liquid, his hand flailing at shoulder height as if trying to grasp a word from thin air. Then the hand abruptly stopped moving, and Ian continued his train of thought to his wine glass.

“...did you know that Tony didn’t know your first name?”

Mickey promptly decided that tea wasn’t going to help him through whatever was going on, so he opened the fridge and grabbed a beer to give himself time to process Ian’s question. What did his first name have anything to do with… well, anything? He turned back around slowly to face Ian and scrunched up his face in doubt, hoping his answer was the right one.

“...no?” Mickey guessed.

Ian hummed appreciatively and nodded to his glass as if he had suspected this all along, as if Mickey’s answer validated some theory he had been mulling over. Mickey stared at Ian as Ian stared at his wine, and Mickey found his behaviour strangely familiar yet couldn’t quite put his finger on exactly what it was, and more importantly, couldn’t figure out how to navigate around the strangeness to get to the behaviour he and Svetlana had predicted so he could continue executing the Restoration Plan. Mickey also vaguely wondered whether there was still a bottle of whiskey in the cupboard above the fridge.

“Apparently, he didn’t know your name the whole time. Well, until I came barging in, but… he’s actually kind of a good boy?” Ian made a noncommittal sound and shrugged before taking a sip of his wine, contemplating something in his head, and continuing the one-sided conversation with his glass. “But I can see why Lena likes him. Bit naive though, gotta admit. I mean, come on, who would have _actually_ believed that _you_ could be some kind of mafia boss...”

Ian snorted at his own statement and smiled, swirling the wine in his glass, and Mickey decided not to be offended that the idea of him as a mafia boss was apparently extremely amusing and completely absurd to Ian. He also hadn’t moved from his previous position, so when Ian sighed deeply and looked up, he found his husband standing in the middle of the kitchen with an unopened beer in his hand, looking like an adorable idiot, staring at him with those gorgeous blue eyes and a confused expression on his face. It seemed to take all of Ian’s willpower not to smile at the picture in front of him, and he opted to hide his mouth with his glass as he sipped the wine while slowly raising an eyebrow. The level of confusion on Mickey’s face only seemed to increase, and Mickey could see Ian debating something in his head that he hadn’t decided on yet. Mickey was missing something, something very obvious and right in his face, and he was sure he was missing something that he and Svetlana had carelessly not considered in the Restoration Plan. Something so _obvious_ and normal and glaring him in the face and--

The oven beeped loudly, and both Ian and Mickey jumped, Ian splashing wine on the kitchen counter as he jerked his glass and Mickey almost letting go of the bottle in his hand. Mickey jumped into action, quickly putting his bottle in the sink and grabbing a kitchen towel to wipe up the spilled wine that Ian was pouting at like a toddler whose ice cream had splattered on the floor. It was almost sweet, the way Ian was acting like a drunk teenag--

Mickey groaned as he realized what he had forgotten to calculate into their Plan, which tiny, crucial detail they had enabled yet not included its consequences into their calculations, which was now wreaking havoc on the carefully constructed Restoration of Peace. His stress and anxiety had not properly connected Ian’s strange reactions and unanticipated behaviour with the pink elephant in the room. He suppressed the urge to whip out his phone, dial the fourth number on speed dial and tell Svetlana of their missing puzzle piece to the sound of his face smacking into the fridge door in frustration. Man plans, and God laughs, and tonight, God was in for the comedy show of a (human) lifetime.

Ian had been drinking.

The strange and confusing pieces finally fell into place. Mickey turned to the stove and quickly put the three containers of lasagna into the oven, programming the oven for 45 minutes as his brain furiously worked to catch up on the current events. Calculating quickly, he estimated that Ian had consumed at least one full glass of wine before he had arrived, another third in the past 5 minutes and had most likely not eaten anything since lunch due to the interruption of the century when the two of them walked into The Situation, and Mickey and Tony afterwards walked back out. Ian would have been extremely worried after Mickey left with Tony, so there was a slight chance that he may have even had a beer before he got Svetlana’s text and call and subsequently showed up at the bar. All in all, with Ian’s tolerance of a 12-year-old Dutch girl and the cocktail of drugs he took on a daily basis, he could be ranging from happily tipsy to belligerently drunk. Mickey mentally backtracked and hastily analyzed all of Ian’s ticks. Taking into account the adequate control Ian still had over his gross motor skills but the lack of control over his facial expressions with the lack of slurring and the missing confidence boost, Mickey ranked him on the ‘pleasantly tipsy’ side of the spectrum. More importantly, Ian appeared to be _happily_ tipsy... which was far from his mood as they had anticipated in the Restoration Plan.

It was time to start improvising.

With his back still to Ian, Mickey took a deep breath and forced his mind and face to go blank the way he would before big meetings with the big bosses. Calculated, composed, and in control. Ian had been talkative and forthcoming with information about Tony, so that’s where he would start. He would have to try and take the remainder of the wine subtly out of the picture as well as feed Ian as soon as possible before he slid from tipsy to party animal mode… or worse; sad and drunk grandpa. Turning around slowly, he was confronted with the physical embodiment of a red-headed, adult puppy as Ian looked at him from under his lashes with wide, innocent eyes, his head slightly tilted to one side-- and an empty wine glass in his hand.

Cursing himself, Tony, Svetlana, Sarah, the old Gods and the New, he turned away again and grabbed himself a very large glass from the cupboard. Grabbing the bottle before Ian could reach for it again, he grossly overfilled his glass with Ian’s wine. Ian’s eyes went from innocent to confused to downright freaked out when Mickey raised the glass to his lips and downed half of the pink liquid in one go. Suppressing the urge to grimace or burp, Mickey set down his glass, poured the rest of the wine into it, placed the empty bottle in the sink and moved the glass just out of reach of Ian’s long limbs. It wasn’t his favorite tactic, but at the very least it would prevent Ian from drinking the rest of the wine. Judging from Ian’s face, it was apparently also an excellent distraction technique. Trying to keep the ball rolling in the right direction, Mickey cleared his throat and focussed his gaze on Ian, trying to engage him in conversation so they could air everything out as soon as possible.

“So ehm... Tony, right,” he started, his brain thinking thinking thinking and coming up with zero small talk, so he went with, “what else did he talk about?”

Mickey’s voice snapped Ian out of his bewilderment, and his mouth opened and closed a few times before his voice caught up. Ian looked from Mickey to his empty wine glass and back as if trying to piece together what had happened, but then appeared to have come up with an answer to Mickey’s question and his brain went that route instead.

“Mostly that he was scared you were going to snipe him, or have the Russians hang him upside down, skin him alive and then leave his severed head in his parents’ bed or something.”

Mickey grimaced, wondering when and why this boy had thought such very specific and morbid thoughts. “It’s supposed to be a horse’s head in the bed, though,” he remarked, and Ian waved his hand in Mickey’s direction, passionately nodding at him in agreement and cutting him off before he could say anything else.

“That’s what I said! He’s not a horse! Boy really needs to get his pop culture references updated if he wants to keep hanging out with the Godfather’s daughter...”

Ian giggled to himself and reached for his glass, frowning as he realized it was still empty. Mickey quickly moved his cup of tea in front of Ian, smiling encouragingly as Ian instinctively reached for it.

“Roksana sends her regards,” he added, nodding as if to a small child for Ian to take the cup and drink some tea. Ian sniffed the cup first, shrugged, and took a sip. Finding it agreeable enough, he drank the whole thing down and smacked the cup on the counter, smiling and burping loudly in Mickey’s direction. Mickey tried his very best to suppress the eyeroll he felt coming, biting the inside of his cheek to keep his stupid grin from creeping onto his face as well at Ian’s juvenile, but oh-so-adorable, drunkenness.

Another memory seemed to strike Ian, and he pointed at Mickey with a finger to get his attention, pausing momentarily to gather his thoughts. All of the sudden, Ian’s face fell, going dark and somber, and Mickey held his breath at the sudden shift.

“Well, _he_ almost pissed his pants when we walked in on them, though it was mostly your face that did it.” Ian dropped his hand flat on the counter with a smack and sighed softly, his eyes downcast as he struggled a bit with his words. “But Lena was really worried too, y’know. I think she almost had a panic attack when you left, and she hasn’t had one of those in ages...”

Mickey immediately felt an ache in his chest, thinking of Lena during one of her episodes, knowing she absolutely hated feeling so scared and out of control. Being the direct cause of pushing his daughter to the edge of a panic attack made him feel like an utter piece of shit and a horrible father. Shame crept up on his spine, and he looked up to stare in the general direction of Lena’s room where she was still playing her rock music loud enough for him to hear the bass through the walls. He mentally asked her for forgiveness, vowing to talk to her as soon as he was done with dealing with Ian. He hadn’t meant to scare her, not more than necessary anyway, but the sight of her and Tony had brought up something primal in him that he hadn’t been able to repress at that moment. The feelings he had projected whilst standing in front of them had been far more instinctive than the controlled warning he had been planning to convey. He hadn’t meant to terrify-- just scare a _little_.

Feeling miserable for himself and his daughter, he grabbed his glass with the pink stuff in it and, before Ian could protest, chugged the rest of it, unable to keep the grimace off his face this time as he wondered why Ian drank such disgusting alcohol. Ian gaped at Mickey, and recognizing where Mickey’s thoughts must have been going, instinctively perked up again and excitedly continued his story, his hand back up and waving around aimlessly to signal the change of mental direction.

“But he recognized Svet, Mick! Hah, Tony saw some emotional resemblance thing between Svet and Lena or something, and he just _knew_ that Svet was Lena’s mom without ever having seen her. Isn’t that crazy? That’s crazy. I think it’s crazy...”

It was Ian’s turn to nod enthusiastically enough at Mickey that Mickey ended up nodding along with him, trying to take his mind off of what he had done to Lena and bring it back to the present problem of a drunk Ian that needed to be fed as soon as possible. Still slowly nodding, Ian’s eyebrows raised to indicate that another train of thought had entered the station.

“And he didn’t know what a White Russian was! I mean, he shouldn’t be drinking anyway, so maybe it’s a good thing that he doesn’t know what a White Russian is,” Ian continued, still nodding at Mickey, “though Lena knew, so that’s slightly disconcerting. Maybe I should have a talk with Mandy sometime soon...”

Trailing off, Ian’s nodding subsided slowly and he brought his hand back down to lie flat on the counter. In a few heartbeats, Mickey could see Ian slide from happily tipsy to staring sadly into the darkness over Mickey’s shoulder, the energy seemingly seeping out of him. Mickey worried his lip at the sudden change, his heart speeding up as Ian’s shoulders sagged and his gaze went distant in the way Mickey recognized as Ian’s mind disconnecting from his body as he sometimes would when he had been pushed beyond his limits.

Mickey instinctively reached over the counter and put his hand on Ian’s, soothingly stroking the back with his thumb as he thought of other ways to get Ian back to him. Ian blinked at his touch, and though his eyes were still glazed over and staring into the distance, the side of his mouth seemed to curve up just the slightest bit before he turned his hand sideways and stroked Mickey’s hand with his thumb once.

Mickey sighed with relief, his skin suddenly crawling with the need to touch Ian more, to walk around the kitchen counter and hug or kiss him or stroke his face to make him happy again, but letting go of Ian’s hand would break the fragile threads holding Ian to him in that moment, so he settled for standing on tiptoes to lean as close as possible to him instead, ignoring the counter digging into his abdomen. He could see that the physical contact was slowly bringing Ian back, but not fast enough for his liking. After what felt like a lifetime, Ian took a deep breath and blinked rapidly, turning to look Mickey in the eyes with a still too-distant look before looking down. He stroked Mickey’s hand once more before sliding his hands off the counter and placing them in his lap, leaving Mickey to feel oddly rejected and cold. Mickey rocked back on his heels, his face flushing with sudden awkwardness as he looked away from Ian, dropping his hands by his side with no idea on how to fix what was going on, _whatever_ was going on.

“I’m just--,” Ian started, his voice cracking a bit before he stopped to find the words and looked up again. “You left me out. There was a whole plan, and all these people knew about it, but you left _me_ out. I could have kept a secret, you know…”

It took Mickey a second to realize that Ian wasn’t mad at him; Ian’s tipsy smile had indeed disguised a gloomy mood, but it hadn’t been anger bubbling underneath the surface. It had been sadness, because what hurt Ian the most was to be overlooked by the people he loved, to be left out of plans and forgotten at home until he became useful again. As Mickey thought back at Ian’s face while he was scolding Svetlana and himself at the bar, he finally recognized the hint of hurt in Ian’s voice, the pain in his face that looked like anger but really wasn’t. Mickey groaned inwardly and, finally understanding the root cause of the issue he had created, he quickly walked around the counter to where Ian was sitting, suddenly questioning whether he could touch him like he wanted to, or not. Ian thankfully answered that question for him, sliding off the chair and grabbing Mickey’s hand as he shuffled to the couch, apparently having aged a decade in the last minute. At the couch, Ian let go of Mickey’s hand and fell heavily into the cushions with his eyes closed, a soft moan of pleasure escaping his lips as he laid his head back to rest against the couch, taking the pressure off his neck.

Mickey awkwardly stood where his hand had been let go, unsure of whether he had only been used as a walking stick or if he was allowed to join the party. Eyes still closed, Ian reached his hand in Mickey’s general direction until he brushed against Mickey’s thigh, grabbing onto Mickey’s pants to pull him down to the couch. Finally getting the hint, Mickey sat down gingerly next to Ian, a little distance between them in case Ian wanted his space, but Ian opened his eyes to stare at Mickey with an unimpressed and exasperated look on his face before rolling his eyes and scooting closer to his husband, manhandling Mickey’s arm around his shoulder so he could slide down and rest his head on Mickey’s shoulder. Still slightly confused about what was going on, Mickey let his hand rest on Ian’s arm, breathing in time with Ian, slowly relaxing as he recognized more familiar territory.

Cuddling on the couch generally meant one or a combination of three things with Ian: a deep conversation, sex, or nothing at all (also known as cuddling). As Mickey calmly waited for Ian to say what was on his mind, he purposely only caressed Ian’s arm with his hand, making sure not to accidentally wander to Ian’s neck or waist which would most often than not get Ian riled up for sex in a heartbeat, in which case the inevitable talk they needed to have to clear the air would be postponed yet again. Realizing with a start that he had just chosen spousal communication and a clean conscience over sex, Mickey wondered if his age was showing, mentally speaking, or if domesticity had made him soft, so to speak. Ian let out a soft, _almost_ content sigh, and Mickey _almost_ smiled, mentally counting down from 4, 3, 2...

“It’s very tiring being mad at you, you know.”

...and 1! Even though Ian sounded tired and a bit annoyed, his predictability made the imbalance and stress Mickey had felt fade away as relief washed over him at being back in a situation he could handle. With the sudden boost of confidence, it took all of Mickey’s self-restraint not to smirk, pull Ian closer to him and kiss him right then and there despite his earlier abstinence. Instead, he opted for just a friendly squeeze, to which Ian responded with a fresh boost of energy by gasping at Mickey’s audacity and wiggling out of his hold, his mouth open and eyebrows drawn together at the affront as he glared at Mickey while holding him at arm’s length.

“Dishonor! Dishonor on your whole family!” Ian exclaimed, using a phrase that toddler Lena had repeated so often when she was annoyed that it had become a family heirloom, to be used whenever the need to express one's annoyance with a family member arose. Mickey’s eyes grew big with equal parts shock and amusement, biting his tongue so he wouldn’t end up asking if their cows were dishonored as well.

“I know what you’re doing, you sneaky bastard!” Ian continued, wiggling a finger in Mickey’s face and then poking him in the chest with it. A soft ‘ouch’ automatically escaped Mickey’s lips even though it hadn’t hurt much, and for a split second, Ian looked concerned and apologetic before he remembered that he was supposed to be annoyed, and the frown was restored.

“But what did I--”

“Ohh no no no, mister!” Ian was shaking his head with conviction now, clearly knowing exactly what Mickey had been trying to do even if Mickey himself had no idea. “You’re not getting _any_ make-up sex until something has been made up, you hear me! And sex is not an apology!”

Now it was Mickey’s turn to be affronted at the mere suggestion that he would lead Ian down a heathen path to escape his own punishment. How his plan had backfired in his face; he immediately vowed that next time, he would go for Ian’s sensitive spot on the right side of his neck so he wouldn’t be able to fling unbased accusations at him in between his moans. Instead of acting on his impure thoughts, Mickey morphed his expression into the closest he could get to Ian’s puppy-eyes, hoping that his remorse would shine through as he slowly raised his hands in defeat before presenting them to Ian, palms up.

“Ian, love... I’m sorry,” was the first thing he said, testing the waters for Ian’s reaction. Ian folded his arms across his chest and huffed, The Chin finally coming out to play, and Mickey had to work hard to suppress his smile: the Restoration Plan was finally back on track. Calmly, Mickey told Ian the story of how Project Reka came to be.

At first, The Chin was staring straight ahead over Mickey’s shoulder, listening but not acknowledging anything as Mickey soldiered on with his tale. It wasn’t until Mickey got to the part where he flat-out decked Vadim in the bar that Ian’s eyes flickered to Mickey’s in concern, his arms slowly unfolding as he realized that the whole plan hadn’t been all roses and sunshine. Mickey shrugged awkwardly and continued, making Ian smile about Artur’s inevitable involvement. Ian sneered as Mickey told him about the bet, ranting at him that he should never have allowed his crew to bet on Lena, that he should have fired those breaking the rules he had set years ago. Mickey gave Ian a few moments to blow off some steam before he very cautiously explained that betting on their daughter was not good enough grounds to fire his best crew, and that his betting rules were not in any way company policy upon which he could justify firing crew members that he wasn’t directly responsible for. Furthermore, none of it had happened during company time, or had impeded the work on any company projects. Ian clearly did not agree, but motioned Mickey to resume the story so he could get it over with.

Mickey glossed over a few details from his bar speech, instead highlighting that he had properly scolded his crew for starting a bet related to Lena, which he guaranteed Ian they all now _deeply_ regretted, and emphasizing the part where Lena’s college fund had been increased by half of the bet money. The Restoration Plan dictated that Mickey pause there, giving Ian time to react. Ian very slowly raised one eyebrow, got up from the couch, walked to the fridge, grabbed two beers, uncapped them in the sink, and walked back, handing Mickey one before he sat back on the couch and took a swig from the other. Mickey wasn’t entirely sure whether that reaction could be considered positive, but as no one had been cursed back to their mothers yet, he considered it a win. They drank in silence for a few moments, Ian clearly brooding over something.

The trickiest part came next: Mickey had to explain why he had gone to Svetlana instead of his husband for a second opinion. Mickey fumbled with the label of the beer bottle, having finished the whole thing long before Ian because he knew what was coming. So far, Ian had reacted on the positive side of things despite a few hiccups. Mickey took a breath to speak, couldn’t find the words, and let the air escape again. He rubbed his eyes, suddenly feeling really tired, and shrugged.

“I was scared, Ian. I just… I didn’t know how to tell you I had screwed up, so I talked to Svet about it first.” Mickey’s eyes pleaded for understanding, but Ian’s expression was carefully neutral, expertly hiding any emotion which generally meant that Ian hadn’t decided yet how to feel about something. Mickey ran a hand through his hair, frustration in every line of his body. “I didn’t mean to leave you out of this complete fuck-up of a bet, but I didn’t think you’d approve. I had no way of beating the bet, and if I hadn’t joined in, they would have done it behind my back anyway.”

Ian shrugged, still carefully concealing how he felt but wanting the story to end, so Mickey carried on, explaining the details that had been planned out for when Tony ended up on his doorstep, and the Project Reka group chat that would alert everyone to “Russian it up” at the bar. He mentioned how a few of his non-Russian speaking crew had learned a couple of sentences in Russian just to be able to participate, and how their interest in the Russian language had brought together a number of unlikely crew members as a result. Ian didn’t seem too impressed, less concerned with the dynamics of Mickey’s crew than his daughter in that moment, but filed the information away for later use as he finished his beer and placed the bottle on the coffee table.

Finally reaching the present day, Mickey hesitated. From what he could tell, Ian had already heard the story from Tony’s point of view, and he now had enough information to fill in the rest as well. He wanted to apologize more, but couldn’t pinpoint exactly for what, and if he apologized ‘in general’, Ian would roll his eyes at him which would achieve nothing.

Mickey frowned as Ian yawned, feeling a yawn of his own bubble up as a consequence, which he unsuccessfully tried to suppress. Ian was blinking slowly, his neutral mask failing a bit as fatigue seemed to take over. Ian scooted closer to him, nudging Mickey a little more to the middle of the couch in order to move back into their original cuddling position. Mickey just let it happen, cautiously placing his hand on Ian’s arm when the redhead was properly installed. A soft sigh escaped Ian’s lips, and Mickey smirked as his husband relaxed against him, knowing that Ian was no longer pissed off at him. There was always a chance that a mood would flare up on a later date, but for the time being, the storm had passed, The Chin had retired and the doghouse had been avoided. Mickey’s body started relaxing into Ian’s as that knowledge calmed the last of his nerves, and the wine he had consumed earlier made him feel warm, loose and sleepy.

Ian moved around a bit more, opening his sleepy eyes again and leaning his head back to look sideways at Mickey. “I would have liked to have seen Tony’s face when he realized what was going on.” Ian shrugged.

Mickey frowned, highly doubting that Tony’s imagination could have encapsulated everything that had happened around him. “ _Did_ Tony actually realize what was going on?” he asked.

Ian snorted in response. “Tony didn’t, not from what I could tell, but Lena figured it out when she saw money change hands at the bar. She told him so on the way back, so Tony does know _now,_ ” he elaborated.

Mickey smiled, proud that his daughter had figured out so much with so little information.

“I’m sure Sarah is getting a call,” he reasoned.

“I’m sure Svetlana has gotten a call already,” Ian added.

They both chuckled, imagining their daughter facing off with her mother. There was no way in hell that Lena could win that battle. When Ian’s giggling persisted, Mickey once more recognized the signs of his happily tipsy albeit sleepy husband’s mood returning. He smiled as Ian changed positions again, snuggling even closer, and lovingly ran his hand through the soft red hair at the bottom of Ian’s neck. Ian sighed contently, relaxing against Mickey as his eyes closed and his body started to shut down. He tried to say something, but what came out wasn’t coherent enough for Mickey to understand.

“What’s that, Mumbles?”

Ian shifted a bit, and licked his lips before trying again. “I said, he’s got to learn. If he wants to stick around, he’s got to learn.”

Ian nodded sleepily at his own statement, yawning twice in a row and causing Mickey to yawn along. Mickey looked at Ian in confusion, his own tired brain no longer succeeding in catching up with Ian’s scattered train of thought.

“What’s he supposed to learn, bluey?”

“Survival... surv-- surviving!”

“Surviving what?”

Ian pushed himself into a sitting position so he could stare Mickey in the eye, the look on his face indicating that Mickey should have _obviously_ figured out what he was talking about by now. Mickey just stared back at him with two big, blue and confused eyes until Ian’s rolled back into his head and he started elaborating.

“Us!” Ian said, his hand moving between the two of them, as if that explained everything. Mickey could not help one eyebrow from rising in confusion, which was clearly not the reaction Ian was looking for.

“And this!” he continued, gesturing to now encompass the whole living room as Mickey pursed his lips so he wouldn’t burst out laughing, a laugh already tickling the back of his throat. As it had become painfully obvious that Mickey still had no idea what Ian was talking about, Ian huffed and threw up his hands.

“Surviving the Milkoviches!”

Mickey burst out laughing at that, and Ian threw up his hands before aggressively trying to resume his cuddling position. Mickey snorted at Ian’s ridiculousness and scooted down the couch to pull him up for a kiss, chuckling in Ian’s mouth as he huffed and puffed and then melted into the kiss like Mickey knew he would. As Ian’s annoyance disappeared, so did the rest of his energy, and their lazy kissing turned into soft pecks and smiling lips touching, sharing each other’s breath until their breath calmed down and their bodies relaxed. Ian moaned softly as he laid his head to rest on Mickey’s shoulder, and Mickey pulled him closer so they melded together on the couch, Ian’s slow breathing a key indicator that he was already pretty far gone. Not long after, Mickey’s blinking slowed down to the point that his eyelids no longer opened, and the long and stressful night finally caught up to him, dragging his mind and body down to darkness.

Mickey’s final thought was that he should go hug his daughter, but the blanket of sleep descended upon him before he could open his eyes again.

_‘msorry, Lena, I lov_

 

* * *

 

The oven beeped loudly once, automatically turning off after signaling that the 45 minutes had passed. Neither man heard it, but she was no man.


	10. Sneaking around with Ms. Lena Milkovich-Gallagher

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena put her ear to the door, but the remaining vibrations of her music and the thumping of her heart made it impossible to hear if there was anything going on on the other side. Taking the risk, she carefully lifted and pushed open her bedroom door an inch or two and listened for the typical sounds of someone messing around in the kitchen or watching tv in the living room.

Lena hadn’t pouted. No, not at all.

She hadn’t Chinned her way through the entire walk home while Tony nervously ranted on and on about what her dad had not-said and done. She hadn’t held her tongue when Tony recounted how sure he was that he was going to get his ass kicked at the bar until those random celebrations started happening. She hadn’t rolled her eyes at him in irritation as she explained that those hadn’t been just _random_ celebrations but the obvious culmination of a bet, considering the money she had seen change hands between her dad’s crew members. She had also not called Tony a ditzy blonde and asked if he had been boarded at hockey practice recently for not realizing that he had been part of said bet, and that maybe he should call his aunt for more details because Sarah was _always_ involved in these kinds of things. She hadn’t thoughtlessly listed the ingredients to a White Russian in front of her pops either after Tony mentioned some ‘milky drink thing’ he had choked on. And she had most definitely not thrown a tantrum after Ian had sent Tony home right before they reached their house, shoving Tony’s lost phone into his hands, yelling at Ian that it was unfair and that it wasn’t even her fault before glaring him down and loudly stomping the rest of the way home, up the stairs, through the front door and to her room, angrily slamming her bedroom door shut without saying another word to anyone.

She had furthermore not turned the volume of her music all the way up to drown out the sound of Ian softly knocking on her door a few moments later, asking her if she wanted to talk, or if she’d like to have some dinner or watch tv with him. She had surely not tried calling her mother a few times but reaching her voicemail instead, which was probably for the best considering that she wouldn’t have been able to hear Svetlana over her loud music anyway. She certainly had not texted Tony to tell her _everything_ that Sarah had told him, which had pretty much amounted to a) no, Sarah did not work for the Russian mafia, b) that question alone had set him back 3 minutes because Sarah could _not_ stop laughing, and, once Sarah could talk without giggling again, c) a summarized version of how the bet had come to be and how, apparently, her dad had tried to keep everything and everyone under wraps so Lena wouldn’t get involved, or hurt. Also, apparently, d) a certain degree of apologizing occurred even as Sarah started laughing again when Tony had sheepishly told her that he had called Mickey ‘the King of the Russian mafia’. Lena had _certainly_ not snorted at that.

And finally, Lena was absolutely, definitely, and most unequivocally _not_ pouting in her room for half of the evening like an immature, 12-year-old little shit that was totally unwilling to face her parents for anything in the world that night, no sirree. No. Not at all. Not even when her stomach grumbled so loudly that she was sure her dad would come barging through the door in search of the grizzly bear who had clearly broken into her room.

Lena absently pressed her hand into her belly to try and stifle the sound as the smell of burned cheese coming from the kitchen practically engulfed her body and mind. Not yet willing to give in to the will of the flesh, she tried to distract herself from longingly staring at her bedroom door by sending off a few texts to see if Tony had any other information from his aunt, or his mother, anything at all really, and what was his hockey schedule like, did he want to hang out tomorrow, wasn’t that new assassins movie he wanted to see out in theaters this week, but after 3 minutes and 27 seconds without a response, she gave up on him.

The cheese was still lovingly calling her name, and her steel resolve was weakening quickly.

Lena tore her gaze away from her bedroom door and groaned in frustration as she got up to dig her hand underneath her mattress for her secret chocolate stash. There were multiple stashes of secret food hidden around the house at any given time, belonging to multiple people. Sometimes, someone ( _mostly Mickey_ ) would discover someone else’s stash ( _generally Ian’s_ ) and eat the whole lot of it before that someone ( _p_ _oor Ian_ ) could discover that there were no more Pringles stashed in the back of the pantry behind the big box of cereal ( _amateurs_ ).

Their squirrel-y behaviour was all the consequence of a teenage Yevgeny pronouncing everything in the fridge to be of the collective property of every resident in the house, and promptly eating everyone’s favorite things, every single time, until the remaining residents decided that it was easier to just hide their non-perishable goodies from the juvenile tiger periodically prowling through the fridge instead of trying to fight him on it. Even with Yev at college, the practice continued, and Lena’s stomach settled down for all of two heartbeats before it realized that it had been tricked, and made it known that chocolate wasn’t to be confused with cheese. After downing two glasses of water and another strip of chocolate yielded no results, Lena had no choice but to surrender to her stomach’s decision. But not having a choice didn’t mean she had to succumb to facing her parents...

Opening her door while playing music would instantly alert her parents to her presence, and turning off the music in one fell swoop would do the same, so Lena slowly started lowering her music by random intervals while distracting herself with social media, hoping that her parents wouldn’t notice the sudden lack of a bass vibrating through the house. After going through all her regular social medias, the local news, a few cat videos and an accidental Rick Roll, she deemed the music low enough not to forewarn her parents of her door opening. Lena put her ear to the door, but the remaining vibrations of her music and the thumping of her heart made it impossible to hear if there was anything going on on the other side. Taking the risk, she carefully lifted and pushed open her bedroom door an inch or two and listened for the typical sounds of someone messing around in the kitchen or watching tv in the living room, but the house appeared to be quiet, with just the soft sound of her breathing and a few cars driving by outside disturbing the calm.

A lion barged through the confines of her stomach and she accidentally smacked both hands to her belly to cover the growling noise, screwing up her face as she waited for either of her dads to call out her name now that she had very loudly announced her presence, twice. As the seconds dragged by, she belatedly realized that no one in the house had stirred and that no one was going to call her name because no one seemed to be around, or awake. Before her stomach could serenade her again, Lena quickly tiptoed down the hallway and peeked around the corner to check if either dad was in the kitchen or the living room, feeling both foolish as well as a little bit slick considering that she hadn’t been caught ( _yet_ ). With the coast ( _apparently_ ) clear, she continued her sneaking into the kitchen, searching with her nose for the source of the cheese smell until she felt the heat coming from the oven and stove. Pulling open the oven door, she triumphantly stared at the 3 portions of lasagna it guarded inside, 3 beauties just waiting to be consumed. A little bit of the cheese had spilled from one of the portions and landed on the bottom of the oven, resulting in the burned cheese smell that had blissfully guided her to her prize, and she couldn’t be happier about it. Putting on two oven mitts, she cautiously took the containers out of the oven one by one and placed them on top of the stove. She then carefully sized up the portions, calculating which of the 3 portions was biggest in size with the most cheese. Finally deciding on the far left portion, she opened the drawer to grab a fork when movement in the living room made her gasp loudly and her heart pound into her ears.

She whipped around, searching for the source of the sound and movement as she held the fork in front of her like a weapon. She hadn’t seen or heard anyone come in while she was standing in the kitchen, so she rationalized that they must have already been there when she had walked in. Slowly creeping to the living room, she realized the orange-y thing popping up from the couch wasn’t a rug but her pops’ head, and as she walked closer, she realized her dad was there too. Walking around the couch for a better view, she concluded that her parents looked like a ridiculous mess; they were both looking utterly exhausted, semi-leaning on each other as if either of them wouldn’t be able to maintain their position without the other’s support, limbs intertwined at random angles as they held hands and Mickey drooling on Ian’s shoulder while Ian snored softly. She was sure Ian was going to feel it in his neck in the morning, and Mickey would get teased about the drooling for at least a week or two ( _by her_ ).

Lena’s anger at all the drama of that day slowly dissipated at the sight of her parents sleeping in a soft little heap on the couch like young lovers. A smile tugged at her lips, and she let out a deep sigh as her Gallagher temper slowly bled out into the milder Milkovich side of her. It wasn’t often that she witnessed her parents in such a strangely intimate setting, though they had always been plenty affectionate around the house and their kids when she was growing up. She would occasionally walk in on them sweetly kissing ( _ew_ ), Mickey looking at Ian as if he personally made the sun come up every day just by smiling ( _kind of adorable_ ), or Ian suggestively looking Mickey up and down ( _t_ _otally gross_ ). Still holding onto her fork, she went to her parents’ bedroom to grab their biggest blanket, dragging it back to the living room and carefully placing it on and around her parents so they were properly covered, but not choking on it. Ian let out a soft sigh and cuddled even closer into Mickey, who didn’t stir for the life of him and just continued his mission to drool a trail all the way down Ian’s arm.

Nodding to herself, Lena softly padded back to the kitchen before her stomach-monster could rear its ugly head again. After cutting her chosen portion into perfectly bite-sized pieces, she unceremoniously shoveled three forkfuls of the lasagna in her mouth until nothing else fit, stifled the moan waiting to escape as the cheese hit her tongue and slowly started chewing. Covering the two remaining lasagnas with aluminium foil, she placed them in the fridge so they could be reheated the following day. She checked that the oven was indeed turned off and, recognizing the empty bottle of wine in the sink, filled two glasses with water and placed them on the coffee table in front of her dads where she knew they would find them. After double-checking that the front door was locked, she was satisfied that she had succeeded in her daughterly responsibilities for the night and could retire to her room with a content heart.

She grabbed her lasagna, shoved another forkful in her mouth, and turned off the lights in the kitchen and living room before softly padding back towards her bedroom. Just before reaching the hallway, she glanced back into the darkness at where her two dads were lying together on the couch, two souls irrevocably intertwined with each other, and with hers. In her younger and more rebellious teenage years, she had only ever resented her unusual family arrangement for the shortest period of time until she realized that everybody else’s ‘normal’ families were either boring as hell, or more fucked up than hers. Since then, she’d been secretly pleased that she had ended up with two kick-ass but super loving dads, one terrifying but incredible mother, a dipshit of an older brother whom she loved with all of her heart, and a huge extended family that, more often than not, provided a significant amount of entertainment to the Milkovich-Gallaghers. And despite the fact that she frequently pissed off all 3 of her parents, that she didn’t agree with a number of the decisions her dads made ( _especially those impacting her personal life_ ), and that Mickey had scared the shit out of her early that day, she knew that her dads ( _and Svet_ ) would always be there for her and try to do right by her regardless of the circumstances.

Smiling to herself, she stepped into her room and carefully closed her door, making sure to lift the door a little so it wouldn’t scrape the floor, before putting down the lasagna on her desk. Putting on her wireless headphones, she turned on some smooth Icelandic island songs to guide her through the sweet lasagna eating she was about to perform. And in between the chewing and humming along to strings and piano, her smile never left her face.

_I love you, dads. Sweet dreams..._


	11. Payback is a bitch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She closed the door quietly and contemplated her options, which she reasoned were threefold:  
> 1) do nothing and hope it goes away,  
> 2) wake up her dads so they can do something about it, or  
> 3) deal with the problem herself.
> 
> Lena Milkovich-Gallagher could take care of business herself. She was not afraid, and there was no way was she going to let such a slight on her honour go without a fight. Lena was going to find out who had illegally entered their house and kick the fucking shit out of them.

It was well past midnight when Lena was left mid-song, mid-sentence and mid-facial expression as her music abruptly stopped playing due to her headphones running out of battery. Throwing her hairbrush on her bed in annoyance at not being able to finish her most recent karaoke choreography, she yanked off the headphones and dumped them on her desk, starting the dreadful task of trying to find her charger in the mess of her bedroom.

During her Quest for the Missing Electronics, and in the absence of her headphones and music, she noticed a...  noise, a sound that’s not supposed to be there. Turning her head like a puppy to locate the sound, she walked around her room to figure out where it was coming from. She opened her window to see if there was something happening outside, but the sound didn’t seem to increase in volume. Walking in a half circle, she went to her door, cracked it open an inch and peered into the darkness of the hallway, belatedly realizing she had turned off all the lights earlier that night but confirming that the sound was indeed coming from inside the house.

Her heart sped up, a million possibilities racing through her brain, ranging from burglars to raccoons to frogs to the oven having spontaneously turned back on and burning the house to a crisp ( _except she couldn’t smell anything burning_ ). Burglaries weren’t unheard of in their area, but their apartment had always been spared from it, one way or the other. Statistically speaking, it was bound to happen, and Lena assumed that tonight that may be the case.

She closed the door quietly and contemplated her options, which she reasoned were threefold: 1) do nothing and hope it goes away, 2) wake up her dads so they can do something about it, or 3) deal with the problem herself.

Doing nothing was not an option. Absolutely out of the question. Not even worthy of contemplation.

Waking up her dads presented itself with a somewhat geographical issue. Of the three bedrooms in the apartment, Lena’s faced the back of the building and was the one furthest removed from the front door, separated by her bathroom, Yev’s old room and her parents’ bedroom which faced the front of the building. The three bedrooms were separated from the kitchen, dining area and living room by a hallway stretching from her door to the left side of Yev’s old room and her parents’ door to the right side of Yev’s old room. In order for her to get from her door to her parents’ bedroom, she’d have to cross the hallway, run across the open arch that mouthed into the living area to the other end of the hallway, and try to open her parents’ door quietly, wake up her dads without either of them making too much noise, and then explain the situation, all in the hopes that whomever was roaming around the house didn’t hear any of this. Further considering that she had found an empty bottle of wine earlier, Lena figured that waking up her dads was going to be tedious and noisy business ( _especially on the off-chance that they were still tipsy_ ), which wasn’t something she could afford to do.

And furthermore, Lena Milkovich-Gallagher could take care of business herself. She was not afraid of a sound or the possibility of someone in her house, no sirree. No way was she going to let such a slight on her honour go without a fight. She didn’t quit ballet to start training in karate at the age of 7 just to let this fight slip through her fingers. Lena was going to find out who had illegally entered their house and kick the fucking _shit_ out of them.

Having come up with the broadest definition of a plan she could think of and being calm enough to think straight again, she rummaged around in her underwear drawer and took out her favorite brass knuckles, pausing before pulling her collapsible baton from her nightstand as well. Taking a deep breath, she briefly closed her eyes and centered her thoughts like she was taught to do in her karate training. She visualized the house, the route to the living room, the obstacles in her way. She slipped on the brass knuckles and turned the baton around in her right hand until it felt comfortable. Opening her eyes with fresh vigour, she nodded to herself-- and realized she wasn’t wearing any pants. Groaning, she quickly put the weapons on her bed before jumping into the first pair of shorts she could find on the floor near her bed. Grabbing the brass knuckles and baton once more, she turned off her lights and let her eyes readjust to the darkness. Then, she carefully opened the door, lifting it so it wouldn’t scrape the floor, and slipped out without a sound, leaving the door ajar in case she needed a quick get-away or more weapons.

She creeped into the hallway, setting one foot quietly in front of the other, stopping occasionally to make sure no sounds were coming directly her way before walking a few more steps and repeating the procedure. Her heart was pounding loudly in her chest, echoing in her ears, and the sound of her heart made it hard to hear the quiet sounds in the house. A car honked outside, and she all but jumped out of her skin, almost dropping the brass knuckles as a soft squeal escaped her own throat. She mentally chastised herself for being so jumpy, telling herself to stay centered, stay focussed, be zen and in the moment and all that crap.

Her pounding heart did not help one bit, now causing a slight ringing in her ear and the realization that anyone within a 2-mile radius could probably hear her coming. In her rising panic, she almost didn’t hear the dark, low male voice, which completely shocked her out of her thoughts, leaving her brain blank and without a contingency plan. The sound of soft clapping followed, and she recognized it as the noise she hadn’t been able to identify in her bedroom. She had once read that some blind people could use finger snapping or clapping as echolocation to ‘hear’ their way around, but it seemed unlikely to her that they were being robbed by 3 blind burglars, so that option went out the window. Pushing herself to sort out her (blank) thoughts, she stopped walking to reason that, even though she hadn’t heard what the man had said, it had definitely been a man, and he had been talking to someone else, so there were at least 2 burglars in her house, most likely 3 if she trusted her uncle Iggy on his preferred burglary techniques. Her confidence flagged a little, but she held onto her knuckles and baton, trying to find an advantage in her situation.

The idea struck her, and she smiled evilly as she realized that _because_ she had turned off all the lights in the house, the house was extremely dark, and she could ruin the burglars’ night vision by turning on the lights in the living room from around the corner of the hallway, giving herself a few extra seconds to assess the situation and work with the element of surprise. Her confidence boosted again, she decided to play fast and dirty. Quickly tiptoeing to the arch in the hallway that mouthed into the living room, she moved her knuckles and baton into her left hand, pressed herself against the wall and reached her right hand around the corner to feel for the light switches. Having found them, she took one more second to prepare herself as she switched on the lights and came running into the living room, a battle cry exploding from her throat as she flicked her wrist to extend her baton to its full length.

Two pairs of startled eyes stared at her from the couch, green and blue and _very_ confused.

Lena whipped her head around, but the adrenaline coursing through her body had slowed down her brain functions significantly to the point that, in all of her fight-or-flight-mode, she couldn’t figure out where the burglars were that she was expecting, and what Ian was doing naked, bent over Mickey on the cou-

“OHHHH MY GOD!” she shrieked as her brain caught up, dropping her brass knuckles and baton to the floor with two loud clangs and covering her eyes with her hands like a 12-year-old. “NONONONONO GOD _NO_ EW!”

Covering her eyes, stomping her feet while turning in a circle and still _loudly_ ew-ing away, she could hear a whole lot of fumbling around on the couch, Mickey hissing in pain and Ian profusely apologizing to someone ( _to her? to Mickey? who knew_ ).

Her brain had gone blank, and she decided to just _walk away_ with her hands on her face, but ended up with the kitchen counter in her gut as she had apparently not turned in a perfect 360 degrees circle. Even through all the ruckus, Ian had still heard her soft groan of pain.

“Lena, are you okay? I’m so sorr- Mick, get up, just… wear that- I’m so sorry, Lena! Lena?” Ian pleaded, and she could hear footsteps coming closer.

“Stay where you are!” she exclaimed, her hands still on her eyes as she tried to burn the image of her dads doing _it,_ the thought alone making her face crinkle up in teenage disgust.

“Lena?” Ian called her name again, a little bit closer than he was before.

“Are you covered up?!” she shrieked out in panic, multiple images popping up before she could shake her head violently to fling them away again. She could hear Mickey snickering in the background.

“This is _not_ funny, dad!” she yelled at him, and took her hands off her face to emphasize her point with a nasty glare, _very_ thankful to see that both Ian and Mickey were respectively covered by a blanket and a pair of pants. Ian’s big, green puppy-eyes were blazing in their angelic glory a few feet away whereas Mickey was visibly failing to contain the giggles, his face red, eyes watering and body occasionally shaking in silent laughter. Lena pursed her lips together as she tried to think of how to chastise her parents best when Mickey could no longer hold it in, his booming laughter filling the room. Ian turned around to glare at his husband, and Lena’s mouth fell open as she stared at him in outrage, which caused Mickey to start wheezing after he looked up at the faces of his husband and daughter. He doubled over with laughter, smacking the couch with his hand as he couldn’t get enough air to breathe. Lena could see Ian’s back shaking softly as he was facing his husband, unable to contain himself when Mickey started to snort, tears rolling from her dad’s eyes.

“You two are _impossible!_ ” she shouted indignantly, and both adults roared with laughter at that, Ian scrambling to catch the blanket as it almost dropped from his waist when Mickey fell off the couch, still giggling at he lay on the floor.

Lena huffed and stomped off to the hallway, Mickey weakly calling after her from the floor in between giggles, Ian holding onto a chair with one hand and the blanket with the other as he laughed at Mickey.

“Karma will get you!” she managed to interject in between the noise as she stood in the arch of the hallway, showing her parents the Chin Jr. before power-walking to her bedroom, intent on making the house tremble with the slam that was to follow.

“Let me know how it feels, sweetie!” Mickey yelled after her, loud enough for her to hear him right before she slammed her door shut. She turned on her stereo before faceplanting into her bed, lying there until the need to breathe made her push herself off the pillow. She crammed her hand underneath her mattress for the second time that night, grabbing a Snickers bar and ripping off the wrapper before shoving the whole thing in her mouth. Chewing aggressively, she mulled over her dad’s last words ( _always one to get the last word in, wasn’t he_ ), and sighed as she realized that he was right.

Karma had gotten her already.

_Payback is a bitch._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you *so* much to everyone for reading, for your kudos and your comments, and for your overall drive to keep me going.  
> It was a lot of fun creating the Milkovich-Gallagher family and writing this story, and I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have! :)


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